Just around last October, a large-scale student protest broke out in Thailand. Thailand's government, led by the army chief turned Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, announced after the protest that it would not be allowed with public meetings and should censor the media in response to the growing student protests. The protestors refuted the emergency decree as another attempt by the government to take their rights away and vowed to incite. Bunkueanun Paotong(Peck, G., & Blake, C.,), the one leader of the student movement, is also regarded as a criminal organization leader. The crime charged may lead to his life in prison.
The reason for this massive student protest is Thailand's monarchy, which dates back to the political coup in 2014 when Prayuth came to power and continues. The so-called monarchy is a political system based on one's indivisible sovereignty or rule. It applies to countries where the supreme power belongs to the monarch, the individual ruler as the head of state, and obtains status through heredity. These rules also strengthened the military government's control overpower and the people. In 2014, many critics of the monarchy disappeared in the end. The reason was apparent. In 2015, it spent the US $540 million, more than the Ministry of foreign affairs' budget, to launch a propaganda campaign called "worship, protect and defend the monarchy". In the 2016 budget, the ruling military government increased the expenditure on "maintaining, protecting and maintaining the monarchy" to 18 billion baht (514 million US dollars) (Wikipedia). Moreover, the money distribution to the monarchy caused a series of wealth gaps in Thailand. When an anti-monarchy candidate took part in the election, it disappeared in the end, and the students' hope dashed.
Photo via: AP photo/Gemunu Amarashinghe, File
As more and more students learn about politics, they learn different things. They wanted the king's assets to be separated from the State Property Bureau. Banned the king from expressing his political views, called on the prime minister to resign, formulated a new constitution, gradually adopted the Democratic regime to produce a fair, transparent election, and stopped attacking dissidents and opposition parties. This request is unprecedented because if someone talks about the disadvantages of the monarchy in Thailand, he/she may be sentenced to 15 years in prison. But the students chose to do it. As a result, the police arrested some of the protest leaders, the government started a state of emergency and warned students not to challenge and discredit the monarchy. If they do so, the government will take more severe actions.
Let us review the riots in Hong Kong in 2019. From the most straightforward point of view, this unprecedented riot is also because the Hong Kong students are afraid that they will lose their high degree of autonomy. Therefore, they want to make Hong Kong Independent through their radical actions. They want to have self-government and use democracy to rule their "Country," so if these radicals want to get rid of the "one country, two systems" and Beijing's control, they use the worst tactics and methods. Nevertheless, in the end, what did the students in Hong Kong get? Students of different ages were arrested. Some of them were only seven years old. Furthermore, the government introduced the national security law in Hong Kong to restrict them. And the leader of the riot was arrested in 2020.
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The protest in Thailand and Hong Kong have common characteristics:
1. They are all led by young students.
2. They all have common aspirations, and their goals are a democracy.
3. They all want to achieve their goals through protest.
Nevertheless, does protest help them with the democracy or autonomy they want? All of the results are that the protest leaders were arrested in the end, and the government has become more sensitive to the issues they want to protest against and strengthen its prevention. It also makes students' ideas more and more impossible to realize.
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