A Hyper-Royalist Parapolitics in Thailand

In the years since the 19 September 2006 coup, there has been a resurgence in prosecutions under Article 112 of the Thai Criminal Code, the measure which criminalizes and provides for harsh penalties for alleged lèse majesté. One of the striking features of recent court decisions in Article 112 cases is that judges have gone beyond the boundaries of law to justify the convictions, and developed a jurisprudence that centres on monarchical heritage. Right-wing citizens have taken similar ideas as a justification to engage in violence against those with whom they disagree. This article develops a framework—hyper-royalist parapolitics—to examine an attack on law activists, a Criminal Court decision, and a Constitutional Court comment which represent this new political form, and to query the broader transformations they signal in the Thai polity. The article concludes with reflections on the framework in light of the 22 May 2014 coup

Dictatorship as occupation in Thailand

On 22 May 2014, a junta calling itself the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) launched the 12th coup in Thailand since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932. The NCPO's rule consolidated into a dictatorship marked by sweeping arrests, arbitrary detention, the criminalization of political participation, and use of military courts to prosecute dissidents. During the three years of rule by the NCPO, the repression of dictatorship has intensified during the royal transition from Rama IX to Rama X. Concerned with the ongoing crisis of rights violations and lack of clear signs of a transition from dictatorship to democracy, this article proposes analyzing the current Thai regime as a form of occupation. The occupation is characterized by the arbitrary exercise of law, citizen complicity, and persistent fear, particularly around Article 112, the law criminalizing lèse majesté. Drawing on the work of Eyal Benvenisti, the article first outlines the broad contours of occupation, then turns to a specific instance of injustice in the exercise of Article 112, next examines the foundational inequality behind citizen complicity in the regime, and finally, reflects on the urgency of analysis given the ongoing expansion of fear and uncertainty

Tracing an Uneven History: Notes on Sources and Trajectories of Thai State Violence

This research note outlines a series of questions about conducting research on state violence and human rights in Thailand. Taking as a central problem the recurrence of state violence across regimes both dictatorial and democratic in the 80 years since the end of the absolute monarchy, I argue that the failure to secure accountability for state violence can productively be placed at the center of researching and writing about modern Thai history. Unevenness is common both to the attempts to secure state accountability for state violence and to the available archival and other sources for writing histories of such violence. This research note examines the particular methodological and analytical difficulties and productive possibilities presented by the partial attempts and failures to secure state accountability and the equally partial available documentation of state violence

The hidden transcript of amnesty: the 6 October 1976 massacre and coup in Thailand

There were two, not one, amnesty laws passed in relation to the 6 October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University and coup in Thailand. The first amnesty law, passed on 24 December 1976, legalized the coup and prevented those who created the conditions for the coup and seized power on the evening of 6 October from being held to account. The second amnesty law, passed on 16 September 1978, freed eighteen student activists still undergoing criminal prosecution and dismissed the charges against them. Although neither amnesty mentioned the massacre, the urgency of producing and then safeguarding impunity for the state and para-state actors behind the violence at Thammasat was the absent presence in both laws. Combining a close reading of both laws with examination of archival documents about the drafting of the first amnesty law and court and other records related to the second, this article uncovers the hidden transcripts of both amnesty laws as a point of departure for examining questions about impunity, law, and history. First, what are the legal mechanics through which violent actors escape accountability? Second, what are the legal and political functions of amnesty when no crime has been committed? Third and finally, might accountability for past violence be possible, and if so, under what conditions? The answers to these questions illuminate how impunity was produced in the specific case of the 6 October 1976 massacre in Thailand as well as address broader concerns about impunity's role in state formation.The research for this essay was supported under the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Early Career Researcher Award funding scheme [project number DE120101838]

The Anniversary of a Massacre and the Death of a Monarch

As part of this year's anniversary of the October 6, 1976, massacre at Thammasat University, an outdoor exhibit of photographs of the violence and the three preceding years of student and other social movements was displayed upon the very soccer field in the center of campus where students were beaten, shot, lynched, and murdered forty years prior. Several of the photographs were printed on large sheets of acrylic and positioned such that the images of the buildings in the photographs were aligned with the actual buildings, which remain largely unchanged. The most striking of these was a photograph of hundreds of students stripped to the waist who were lying face down on the soccer field prior to being arrested and taken away. At the edge of the image was the top of the university's iconic dome building, which lined up with the existing building. The organizers explained that their intention was to reflect a perspective on the past through the eyes of people in the present in order to show the cruelty of humans to one another. The proximity generated by the image was underlined by the fact that the fortieth anniversary of the massacre and coup in 1976 that led to twelve years of dictatorship was taking place under yet another dictatorship, that of a military junta calling itself the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), which seized power on May 22, 2014, in the twelfth coup since the end of the absolute monarchy on June 24, 1932. Suchada Chakphisut, founding editor of Sarakadee magazine and Thai Civil Rights and Investigative Journalism, who was a first-year Thammasat student during the massacre, began her autobiographical account of the day, written for the anniversary this year, by writing: We meet every year when 6 October comes around, and with it an inexplicable sadness always takes hold of my psyche. It has grown even more devastating since the 22 May 2014 coup, in which we must face the news of the arrest and detention of activists and those who oppose dictatorship. This was not a commemoration after dictatorship such as those of the same era held in Argentina or Chile during recent years of democratization, but memories of dictatorship in sit

An Unfinished Past: Assassination and the 1974 Land Rent Control Act in Northern Thailand

This article examines the struggle for land tenancy reform and the assassination of Farmers' Federation of Thailand (FFT) leaders in northern Thailand during the period of democratic politics between 14 October 1973 and 6 October 1976 as unresolved, ambiguous, and linked events in the recent Thai past. During the 1973-1976 period, farmers became new political and legal subjects as they fought to pass and then implement the 1974 Land Rent Control Act. Drawing on provincial archival records, the author contextualizes how and why tenancy became a contentious issue between farmers and landlords beginning in the 1950s and then examines the anxious and violent backlash with which their organizing in the 1970s was met by state, para-state, right-wing, and landholding elites. The author interrogates the conditions and effects of the assassinations by writing about the life and death of one of the leaders of the FFT, Intha Sribunruang. The denials by a range of state officials of the political nature of Intha and other FFT leaders' murders underscore both the importance of the FFT's work and the necessity to critically evaluate the assassinations. The author concludes by arguing that the lack of resolution surrounding the struggle for tenancy reform and the assassinations of FFT leaders continues to resonate in present-day politics. An Appendix to the article offers the first English-language list of the FFT leaders known to have been killed or victimized by violence between 1974 and 1979

Dispossessing Law: Arbitrary Detention in Southern Thailand

At 3:30 A.M. on June 23, 2007, a group of ten police and army officials rattled the gate outside the house of M., a young father, Muslim, and Thai citizen living in Narathiwat. Along with Yala, Pattani, and four districts of Songkhla, Narathiwat is one of the southernmost border provinces of Thailand under martial law and emergency rule. Once M.�and his wife, mother-in-law, and two children�were awake, the officials asked him to open the gate and then for permission to search the house