Between Art and Politics: A Report from Bangkok Brian Curtin
In March this year, the Thai pro-democracy activist Chaiamorn Kaewwiboonpan, a musician who goes by the nickname Ammy, was arrested after publicly burning a portrait of the incumbent king of Thailand, Rama X Maha Vajiralongkorn, in Bangkok. This incident took place a few days earlier in front of a prison, to protest the detention of four activists there on accusations of lèse-majesté, the country’s notorious criminalising of insult to royalty. The incident was part of a groundswell of youth-led activism since early 2020 which is demanding reform of the Thai monarchy, the dissolution of the current government, and a new constitution. Bangkok has since seen mass rallies, violent stand-offs between protestors and the police and the declaration of a state of emergency. Ammy’s iconoclastic action is remarkable not only because it explicitly solicits the ferocity of the regularly used lèse-majesté law. This affront to a traditionally revered, sanctified, figure — a reverence rooted in premodern notions of divine kingship — is so unprecedented and taboo that rumours of a possible execution of Ammy have circulated. And here we can recall how the infamous October 1976 massacre of leftist protestors at Thammasat University in Bangkok was partly provoked by (untrue) media claims that they had mocked an effigy of royalty, with members of the public then joining the actions of police and paramilitaries. But, however, the young man’s belligerence could be seen as inevitable, or not entirely a shocking surprise, or not, as some commentators have suggested, an exceptional, youthful
My Own Words
73
