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BANGKOK – Cream colored Rolls-Royce limousine crawled through the angry crowd. The Queen of Thailand smiled.
But what Queen Suthida Vajiralongkorn Na Ayudhya saw on Wednesday, on a majestic street in Bangkok, may have been sobering.
Anti-government protesters shouted “my taxes!” Referring to his personal contributions to the royal coffers. The police detained them, but could not hide the defiant greetings from the protesters.
For months now, thousands of pro-democracy protesters have gathered to call for reforms to the monarchy and the influential military institutions that have dominated Thailand’s power structure for decades.
But the royal limousine route on Wednesday was the first time that members of the nuclear royal family had seen so closely the faces of Thais who openly question the exalted position of the monarchy in the country. King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun of Thailand and part of his immediate family, the queen, who is his fourth wife and his youngest son, the heir apparent, live most of the year in Germany.
On Thursday morning, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha of Thailand, a retired general, had ordered riot police to clear the protesters from their rally near their offices in Government House, where they had camped for the night asking for his removal.
Officials imposed an emergency decree in Bangkok and gatherings of five or more people were not allowed. The decree also banned news or online content that “could create fear or intentionally distort information” by compromising national security or damaging peace and order.
The Prayuth government, which came to power in a military coup in 2014, was also given the power to declare any area off-limits to potential protesters. The protesters have vowed to regroup Thursday afternoon in a busy business district.
The simple act of a royal caravan driving near an anti-government protest, and the swift crackdown that followed, might not seem like a watershed moment. But Thailand is not an ordinary constitutional monarchy. It is subject to some of the strictest lese majesty laws in the world that criminalize criticism of the crown. During public occasions, Thais are expected to perform an anthem praising some of the richest royals on the planet. When politicians receive an audience with the king, they generally prostrate and crawl forward sliding sideways.
But as the protest movement has grown stronger over the past three months, the taboos surrounding the monarchy have fallen in rapid succession. In Parliament, opposition lawmakers are demanding an investigation of the royal budgets. (After his father’s death in 2016, King Maha Vajiralongkorn took personal control of the crown’s assets.)
In theaters, people no longer feel compelled to present themselves to a photo montage of the king that precedes each screening.
And protesters, old and young alike, have demanded that the 10th king of the Chakri dynasty, who was formally crowned last year with a 16-pound Grand Crown of Victory, not rise above the country’s constitution.
“We are going to fight for democracy, fight for freedom, fight for the equality of ourselves as human beings,” a protest leader popularly known as Justin Samutprakan said Wednesday. “We will not bow, prostrate, crawl no more.”
“As humans, no one is greater than anyone,” he added. “No one has more power than others.”
Dozens of protest leaders, many students, have been arrested in recent weeks and charged with crimes such as sedition that carry a prison sentence of up to seven years. Early Thursday, at least three protest leaders, Arnon Nampa, Parit Chirawat and Panupong Jadnok, were arrested, according to the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights group. Each had been arrested before.
Wednesday’s demonstration also drew large numbers of realistic counter-protesters wearing yellow T-shirts symbolizing their loyalty to the king. Some had the matching haircuts commonly worn by members of the security forces, suggesting that their defense of the Thai crown was an official duty rather than a personal mission.
As crowds on both sides grew on Wednesday, some people in a country conditioned by regular episodes of political violence feared clashes could break out. But apart from some fights, the demonstration against the government, which pushed barricades to march towards Government House, was peaceful.
Before the police took the protesters away on Thursday, the protesters had planned to remain in the streets for at least three days.
King Maha Vajiralongkorn is now back in Bangkok for weeks, a rarity for a monarch who normally spends no more than a couple of days in the country where he reigns.
Last week, Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister, questioned the Thai king’s commitment to politics while living in Germany.
“We have made it clear that policy regarding Thailand should not be conducted from German soil,” Maas told a parliamentary session.
Street protests have regularly gripped Thailand for the past two decades. The security measures in some of those mass demonstrations have been bloody, with dozens of people killed. In recent years, open dissidents who fled abroad after criticizing the monarchy and the army have disappeared. Some of their bodies have been washed with obvious signs of foul play.
“Thailand’s international friends should call on the government to stop arresting peaceful protesters, listen to their views, and allow them to freely and safely express their visions for the future,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement.
The security presence on Wednesday was formidable. Some 15,000 police officers were sent to the protest area near the Democracy Monument, built to commemorate the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932. Public buses were parked to block the road to Government House.
Thai political history is littered with military coups that have annulled the results of the national elections. The junta leaders who conceived the last two coups justified their actions as necessary to protect the monarchy from detractors. The latest coup, in 2014, was followed by the passage of an army-written constitution that has further eroded democratic institutions. The Senate, for example, is now fully appointed.
The protesters have called for a new charter and new elections, after a national vote last year that was dismissed by some international observers as neither free nor fair.
“We have been incarcerated in a special prison called Thailand for a long time,” said Attapon Buapat, another speaker at the protest.
The protest movement has woven various threads of dissatisfaction, ranging from frustration with school uniform rules to anger at the king’s lavish lifestyle at a time when the coronavirus ban on international tourism has hit hard at the economy of Thailand.
The date of the Wednesday protest evoked a student-led uprising on October 14, 1973, which led to the overthrow of a military dictatorship. During the upheaval, under the reign of the current king’s father, the doors of one of the royal palaces were opened to house students fleeing the gunfire.
However, three years later, dozens of protesting students were killed by security forces and paramilitary mobs. The right-wing government was restored in Thailand.
On Wednesday night, as night fell, a group of protesters tried to spread part of the demonstration towards a royal palace. But rows of royalists in yellow shirts stood guard. The protesters fell back. By Thursday morning, everyone was gone.
Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul, a protest leader who has been one of the fiercest critics of the monarchy’s role in Thai society, even as she warned that she does not want the royal institution to be overthrown, said Thursday morning that the right to free assembly must be guaranteed in a democracy.
“It is the fundamental right of all human beings from birth,” said Panusaya, who was arrested Thursday morning. “The emergency decree could be interpreted as the monarchy establishing itself as an opponent of democracy.”
