Finding George Orwell in Bangkok

By EMMA LARKIN / BANGKOK

It is Saturday afternoon and I am wandering the polished hallways of Paragon, one of Bangkok’s most luxurious shopping malls, searching for signs of protest. When a frenetic series of camera flashes light up the atrium windows, I hurry down to the plaza in front of the mall toward a fast-growing throng of journalists, photographers and policemen. The crowd is so thick that the only way to find out what is happening is to squeeze my way through to the center. There, I find the source of all this commotion: a solitary protester. He sits alone amid the hubbub, solemnly holding aloft a copy of George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

In the immediate wake of the military coup in Thailand, which took place on May 22, hundreds of people came out to demonstrate against the overthrow of a democratically elected government. But the country’s new rulers, known as the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), proved astoundingly efficient at routing out any opposition; within a matter of weeks the number of protestors had dwindled to a mere handful. As Thais who oppose the coup grapple with the everdecreasing space available to dissenters, Orwell’s dystopian novel serves as both a cautionary tale and a handbook for defiance.

As in Oceania, the omnipotent state depicted in “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” the NCPO’s ability to control those who oppose it relies primarily on fear. The ruling generals met the early peaceful protests in the capital with a disproportionate show of force, deploying some 6,000 troops to the city center. Organizers were swiftly identified and detained. Hundreds of politicians, activists and academics considered capable of inciting unrest were summoned to report to the military. Most of those detained have since been released, but only after signing an agreement not to express divisive political opinions or stir up opposition to the NCPO.

Surveillance techniques also employ the use of undercover officers. One female protester was forcibly bundled into a taxi by plainclothes policemen, while another was taken away on the back of a motorbike by a security officer sporting the familiar green armband worn by registered members of the press. Likewise, the protester outside Paragon was not arrested by the uniformed policemen who surrounded him but by a team of undercover cops that materialized from among the crowd. By using plainclothes officers in this public manner the NCPO sends a clear message: if the authorities aren’t always in uniform then you never know who the stranger standing next to you might be, or, as posters in Oceania warn, “Big Brother is Watching You.”

Perhaps even more unsettling than this blurring of lines between officialdom and civilians is the encouragement given for the general public to collude with the process. The national deputy police chief has offered 500-baht rewards (around US$15) for photographs of anti-coup activities. Government officials have also been urged to report colleagues who express ideas that might be a threat to national security. And the watchfulness continues online. While the NCPO has established working groups to scour the Internet, police warn that even to “like” something on Facebook could be used as evidence of potential insurrection against the new regime.

Two-Plus-Two

The use of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” as a symbol of protest started among a group of activists who organized public book readings to express their objection to the coup. There was nothing illegal about their silent gatherings; they never lasted longer than an hour and the number of participants in any one group was capped at four (martial law forbids public assemblies of more than five people). But even these small-scale events soon became impossible to conduct without provoking the ire of the NCPO.

The lone anti-coup demonstrator in front of Paragon found a gloomy prescience in the final pages of “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” He had gone to the mall hoping to join a group of fellow student activists but the others were arrested before they could get to the plaza. When a journalist asked if he intended to continue opposing the coup, he quoted the final lines of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” verbatim and noted that the book does not end in victory. “It ends,” he said, “with an ordinary person succumbing to dictatorship; he is brainwashed and swallowed up by dictatorship. If everyone else is willing to give up then I’ll probably have to give up, too.”

Indeed, some would argue that the lack of sustained protest indicates most people support the coup or at least are willing to accept temporary military rule. A poll, taken in mid-June, found that over 93 percent of people were actually happy with the NCPO’s performance. But, in this enforced silence, any pronouncement on the public mood lacks authority; when criticism is prohibited, praise is surely meaningless.

So, as the NCPO imposes its singular narrative upon this chapter in Thai history and discontent is relegated to the realm of private conversation, I find myself seeking out the few signs of resistance that manage to evade the hyper-vigilant authorities. There’s been the odd snippet of graffiti (“damn coup”), swiftly whitewashed over. Someone told me about a plan to paste stickers around Bangkok that defiantly state “2+2=4,” another “Nineteen Eighty-Four” reference (“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.”). And I recently heard that the Thai-language edition of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” has been flying off the bookshop shelves and is now completely out of stock. 

Emma Larkin is the author of “Finding George Orwell in Burma.” A version of this story first appeared in the Nikkei Asian Review.

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