Rebecca Ratcliffe - 'We want a true democracy': students lead Thailand's protest movement
Every morning when the
national anthem plays out in Thai schools, students are expected to stand still
in deference as the country’s flag is raised. But last week some sent a defiant
message, raising their hands in a three-fingered salute – a gesture borrowed
from The Hunger Games that is used widely by Thailand’s growing pro-democracy
movement. Others gathered on school grounds to hold up sheets of blank paper. For more than a month
there have been almost daily student-led rallies spreading across the country,
including a demonstration in Bangkok last weekend attended by more than 10,000
people.
Observers are astonished by how rapidly the protests have spread, by
how young people are challenging traditional hierarchies, and by the boldness
of their demands, some of which relate to the powerful royal family. “Everybody in Thai
society has been very surprised by what is happening right now,” said Kanokrat
Lertchoosakul, a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University’s faculty of political
science: “We have never ever seen a phenomenon like this.”
As well as
university students, children as young as 13 or 14 were organising flash mobs,
she said. The protest movement
is not centrally organised. Instead, different groups have used social media to
coordinate rallies across the country, driven by anger at a military-backed
government they accuse of eroding democracy and holding their country back…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/24/we-want-a-true-democracy-students-lead-thailands-protest-movement