ACT4DEM
Action for People’s Democracy in Thailand (ACT4DEM)
an INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN in solidarity with the
People’s Struggle for Democracy in Thailand
Just 15 years after the abolition of Absolute Monarchy in 1932, the movement for democracy in Thailand was thoroughly crippled by the 1947 military coup. Since then Thai democracy has been little more than an absurd, often tragic dance with the generals – one step forward one step back.
Since 1932 Thailand’s monarcho-military elite has used all possible means to suppress and derail the struggle for democracy, maintaining, for personal advantage, a constant state of socio-economic instability. The few civilian governments that did manage to come into existence were kicked-out within a few months by a bloated Royal Thai Army. During the Cold War the US pumped billions of dollars into the Royal Thai Army, using Thailand as a base for war against the people of Vietnam, Cambodia and Lao.
Monarchism in Thailand was rebuilt to legitimize suppression and oppression of people. In one of the short, rare moments of civilian rule, the US military was ordered to leave Thailand. Since their defeat in South-East Asia had become humiliating, they did not waste time and were packed and gone almost gone 1975. At present they are attempting to make a come-back.
The violent Royal Thai Army crackdown and coup that followed the expulsion of US in 1976 was designed to enable the now insecure Thai military to retake total control of Thailand’s resources. Thailand experienced massive uprisings and violent military crackdowns in 1973, 1976, 1992, 2009 and 2010. After every military coup the military budget was increased. Since the 2006 military coup it has been doubled! The 2006 Coup and the democracy deficit that caused the extreme violence in April-May 2010 is easily traced to 1976.
Never-the-less, the movement for democracy that attempted to end absolute monarchy, that was begun by a handful of educated people in 1932, grew into the student uprisings of the 1970s, and thence, with massive participation of the rural and urban working classes, to the over-throw of the military junta in 1992. This never-ending struggle between the people and the monarcho-militarists is characterised by a never-ending, pitiful record of politicians, academics, writers, journalists, students, farmers and workers being thrown into jail, disappeared and murdered for attempting to speak-out for democracy against injustice. Many are they who are forced to flee the ‘Land of Smiles’.
In 2010 Thailand experienced worst-ever political violence – with 90 dead and over 2000 wounded. A State of Emergency was imposed on Bangkok and 16 provinces, mostly in the north and north-east. Soldiers were sent into the villages and thousands of youth and government officials were mobilized under a fully government-sponsored para-military, ‘Protect the Monarchy’ assault on independent thinking. The Abhisit Government issued arrest warrants for hundreds of people, detained dozens of ‘first-line’ opposition leaders, arrested and detained independent citizen-activists and academics without warrant for just speaking-out. There were many attempted and successful political assassinations, bodies washed-up on beaches, community radios were searched and shut-down and hundreds of thousands of website pages were blocked.
Enough is enough. The International Community’s convenient habit of turning a blind-eye to atrocities committed by the monarcho-military elite in Thailand cannot be allowed to continue.
Since 1932 the people of Thailand have had to face more than 20 attempted or successful military coups, 18 constitutions and 27 Prime Ministers – most of them military generals. In near 80 years only one elected Prime Minister has managed to complete a full term of office. The question . . “Why is Thailand taking so long to emerge as a full-fledged democracy when many other far poorer countries are more advanced?” is not difficult to answer. Under the pretext of ‘national security’ all of Thailand’s long-string of monarcho-military dictatorships have made it their business to allocate huge sums of public money to promote, build and strengthen the institutions of the monarchy, to suppress all forms of opposition, to silence all criticism of the elite power-structure with draconian laws of lès majesté . . and thus to stifle and stunt general education.
The Cold War ended long ago. The world cannot just sit around and openly allow political crime and corruption in Thailand to be perpetuated. For the sake of all Thai and all people of Southeast Asia, Thailand’s silly but murderous political games must be ended. The International Community must end the international skip-along with political corruption in Thailand, and stop using Thailand as a political bubble-zone, as a regional hub, for pushing neo-liberal policies that are designed to suppress and crush people’s democracy.
All of this has been placidly watched by the United Nations regional head-quarters in Bangkok. The Thailand story of 2010 does nothing less than ridicule the so-called ‘Free World’ . . the so-called democrcaies. To not take a firm stand against government that uses instruments like ‘live bullet zones’ to clear civilian protest is nothing less than complicity.
As in the past, in 2010, with regard to the political murder of 90 civilians, there were hundreds of eye-witnesses ready to give testimony, loads of photos and video-clips, but not one military officer or government official, not to mention the culprits at the top, has been charged, or has stepped forward to take responsibility, or been requested to step forward by the Judiciary. Why? Because the royalist government that beventually came to power after the 2006 coup was corrupt and the illegitimate and thus forced to impose both Martial Law and then Emergency Law, to ensure prohibition of freedom of speech and assembly, and to provide itself with the right – to not listen but to terrify – the civilian population e.g. by giving soldiers the right to enter private homes at will.
With the current fearful suppression of Freedom of Speech in Thailand, we have no choice other than to build an International Campaign to help terminate oppression and ensure the application of human rights, justice and democracy in Thailand.
As Martin Luther King said . . “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.
And as Thomas Jefferson said . . ” When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty”
**********************
BACKGROUND
ACT4DEM emerged during the bloody massacre of civilians by the Royal Thai Army in Bangkok 13-19 May 2010, with the launch of an on-line petition to ‘Stop the Bloodshed in Thailand’ on 16 May. Within 2 days the petition was blocked (in Thailand) by the military junta’s so-called Centre for Resolution of the Emergency Situation (CRES). Nonetheless, with 9416 signatures, the petition was delivered to Ban Ki Moon via UN HQ Bangkok on 26 October 2010.
In 2010 the ACT4DEM action agenda was defined as follows:
- Exposing the root-causes of Thailand’s domestic crisis.
- Campaigning for the release of all political and lèse majesté prisoners. (Supporting all campaigning to abolish LM112.)
- Mobilising support for citizen-activists and human right’s defenders – in Thailand and in exile, that are being victimised / criminalised / tortured by Thailand’s monarcho-militarists.
- Publicising testimonies, political issues and events from the grass-root perspective – to counter-balance royalist / governmental propaganda, cover-ups and suppression.
- Drawing the attention of the public to attempts to bring to court the perpetrators of state violence against civilians (including the bringing of ex-PM Abhisit Vejjajiva and other top-brass to the International Criminal Court the political murders of 2010).
- Ensuring that the international community, the ASEAN and the United Nations have no means to pretend they do not have information about monarcho-military state oppression in Thailand.
- Raising political awareness in the tourist industry, and organising tourist campaigns, to ensure that no company or tourist can claim that they are not aware of political oppression in Thailand, or of the human consequences of that oppression.
- Up-dating the website.
. . with demands as follows:
- Outlawing of all types of ‘Protect the Monarchy’ paramilitary activity, especially government-sponsored paramilitary activity and propaganda.
- Justice and compensation to the victims of state oppression, including to the families of those who died in 2010 as a result of government orders to crush civilian protest.
- Release of all political and lèse majesté prisoners.
- Abolition of the law of lèse majesté.
- Abolition of the Privy Council.
- Termination all powers and possibilities for the Monarchy to interfere in political decision-making.
Action time-line:
2010 Petition to ‘Stop the Bloodshed in Thailand’.
2011 Call for release of political prisoners. Paris and countries in Europe.
2012 Campaign to abolish LM 112. Publication of ‘Labour Supporting the Nation’.
2013 Campaign for the rights of Thai berry-pickers in Finland.
2014 Demonstration in Milan against first visit of General Prayuth to Europe.
2015 Paris. Protests and panels against the military junta.
2016 Marking of 10 years of Prayuth’s dictatorship – in Paris, Bonn and South Korea.
2017 Action at king’s residence in Germany. Campaigning in USA: Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago.
2018 Celebrating release of Somyot. Meetings in Cologne, Amsterdam, ASEM / EU Asia Desk Brussels.
2019 ‘Save Faiyen’ operation. Faiyen concert in Paris.
2020 Start of campaigning, in Germany, to bring the Thai king to justice.
2020 ACTION REPORT
The military coups against Thailand’s elected parliaments and governments in 2006 and 2014, and the de-facto return of military dictatorship have been driving Thailand backwards – into a political quagmire of the Royal Thai Army’s very own making. The ascent of Thailand’s new royal potentate has only managed to further expose to the world, in a factual manner, the noxious features of this latest Thai regime.
This long, chaotic, tragic, most recent decade of struggle to liberate Thailand from the grip of monarcho-militarism – from a militarised dictatorship desperate to uphold a monarchy more autocratic and more deeply and openly corrupt than ever before, leads most people to a decidedly singular logical deduction: the time has come to campaign openly to free Thailand from the yolk of monarchy. ACT4DEM’s long journey with in-field research leads to the same conclusion – that dissolution of the Thai monarchy is in fact a necessary precondition for the struggle for equal rights in Thailand to be able to succeed.
After the rescue of the musical band Faiyen from Laos, whose members were next on the ‘to be terminated list’, and their safe arrival in Paris in August 2019, ACT4DEM recognised that it was necessary to review how to campaign, in Europe and throughout the ASEAN, for democracy and justice in Thailand.
All research indicated that Thailand’s Head of State, King Vajiralongkorn, is a criminal personage and that bringing the many crimes of this personage to public notice, and to courts of law, was essential work.
Launch of campaign in Germany to bring the Thai king to justice and end monarcho-militarism in Thailand.
Untouchable by law in Thailand, upon ascending the throne, the new king, who as Crown Prince had become a permanent resident of Germany in 2007, continued to imagine he could do as he pleases in Germany as Thailand’s Head of State.
In April 2020 ACT4DEM was contacted by the organisation pixelHELPER, which is based in Germany, with a request to join forces in the task of exposing the Thai king for what he is – in fact not myth. PixelHELPER is a loose-knit group of free-thinkers and artists, that works with imagery, music and satire to confront injustice, and tyrannical persona in particular.
Both associations recognised the Thai king as a criminal personage who should be indicted for a range of crimes, including responsibility for multiple murders. Both recognised that, protected by draconian laws of lès majesté, with direct personal access to tens of billions (Euro) and direct personal command of some 80 000 elite troops, this criminal personage, as Head of State, is the main obstacle blocking the non-violent pathways to the advancement of human rights, democracy, equitable sustainable development and just procedure in Thailand.
Previously unknown in Thailand, PixelHELPER has the honour of being the first civic organisation in Europe to have the courage to step forward with concrete action to expose the contradictions, pitfalls and dangers of permitting Thailand’s Head of State in-absentia to conduct and direct criminal operations from his residences in Germany.
Collaboration between ACT4DEM and pixelHELPER has been a process of learning how to pioneer political protest in a geo-political arena that has been allowed to slumber in moral ignominy, largely because millions of westerners became accustomed to taking for granted their ability to exploit for pleasure, as if it were a right, the democratic vacuum in Thailand created and maintained by royalist suppression of the democratic aspirations of the great majority of Thai people.
The aim of the campaign was to bring the attention of the German and European public to the contradictions and triple-standards, in Thailand and Europe, that permit the Thai king to use Germany as a sanctuary for indulging his egocentric fantasies, and for plotting and conducting murderous operations against dissenters and opponents of his regime in Thailand.
Good humour aside, the campaign’s main armament has been a light-projector – for projecting satirical messages onto the facades of relevant buildings, for example onto German and Thai administrative buildings. From May through to December these light projections, often in conjunction with protest actions and street happenings, were organised on a near weekly basis. The campaign took no action without permission of the German authorities.
Documentation and reporting of these campaign events and happenings has reached many millions of people in Germany and Thailand and around the world, raising understanding of political realities in Thailand, and understanding that the conduct of this criminal king and his military regime cannot be tolerated.
