Students Call for a Democratic Revolution in Thailand

2020 seems to be the year when students across the globe take part in changing their societies, no matter the cost.

Student protesters. Prachatai. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In Thailand, student-run organizations have led the march that grew to be an all-out revolution in the busy streets of Bangkok. Thousands of protesters have congregated in the crowded commercial center, Ratchaprasong, chanting for the Thai government to listen to their demands. Protesters call for the removal of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, the reduction of the monarchy’s budget so the king’s funds would be separated from crown assets, and the abolition of the strict lese majeste laws which ban the voicing of criticisms against the king. 

The unrest began in 2019 when the government banned the most vocal party opposing the power of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha. Thai citizens are calling for his removal due to the potentially corrupt manner in which he came to power. In 2014 it is said that Prayut staged a coup that shifted his position from army chief to prime minister. The monarchy endorsed his premiership in 2019, allowing him to stay in power after elections which were controversially deemed “fair.” 

The Grand Palace in Bangkok. Tom Eversley. CC0

The protests were put on hold through the early part of the year due to COVID-19, but are now growing at a rapid rate. In early October, the government accused protesters of obstructing Queen Suthida’s motorcade during a mass gathering at the Government House to demand the removal of Prayut. Despite the government’s imposition of emergency measures such as banning the gatherings of five or more people, forbidding the  publication of news that could “harm national security” and deploying 15,000 police officers to quell the protesters, tens of thousands continually show up to stand for their rights.

Woman waving the Thai flag. The Global Panorama. CC BY-SA 2.0

According to Human Rights Watch, the new emergency measures are allowing officials to keep protesters for up to 30 days without bail or access to lawyers and family members. Human Rights Watch’s deputy director of the Asia Division, Phil Robertson, stated that, “Rights to freedom of speech and holding peaceful public assemblies are on the chopping block from a government that is now showing its truly dictatorial nature.”

University students seem to be at the core of the current demonstrations. The Free Youth Movement was behind the first major protest back in July, inspiring a group from Thammasat University to establish the United Front of Thammasat. Even high school students have joined the fray, identifying as the Bad Student Movement, as they call for education reform. Most of these kids are in their twenties, but they have attracted the attention and support of human rights leaders and lawyers like Arnon Nampa, who was arrested in October along with prominent youth leaders. 

Student protesters. Prachatai. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Panupon Jadnok, a teenage protest leader, led a passionate speech during a rally: 

“Like dogs cornered, we are fighting till our deaths. We won't fall back. We won't run away. We won't go anywhere.”

Raising their hands in the iconic three-finger salute made popular by ”The Hunger Games,” protesters are shouting in the streets for the police to “release [their] friends” and to stop being “slaves of dictatorship.” They will continue to fight for what they believe is right until all of their demands have been met and their friends and country are free.

Yuliana Rocio

is currently a Literature/Writing major at the University of California San Diego. Yuliana likes to think of herself as a lover of words and a student of the world. She loves to read, swim, and paint in her free time. She spent her youth as part of a travel-loving family and has grown up seeking adventure. She hopes to develop her writing skills, creating work that reflects her voice and her fierce passion for activism.

Russian Protests Continue for Unprecedented Third Week Straight

Tens of thousands of protesters continue to demonstrate in Khabarovsk, Russia, for the third week straight in an forceful show of civil disobedience against the Putin administration. The protests, which began on July 11, are in response to the Kremlin-led arrest of the popular Khabarovsk Krai governor Sergei Furgal for accusations of multiple murders.

Khabarovsk is the administrative center of Khabarovsk Krai and a city of almost 600,000 people who live over 4,000 miles away from Moscow. Governor Sergei Furgal, who was elected to his position in September 2018, beat Kremlin-backed incumbent Vyacheslav Shport and has since been viewed negatively by President Vladimir Putin. Furgal is a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, while Shport is a member of United Russia, the country’s ruling party.

Governor Furgal was arrested on July 9 on allegations that he played a role in the murders of several businessmen in the region in 2004 and 2005. He was flown to Moscow shortly after to be placed on pretrial detention and was replaced by Mikhail Degtyarev, who previously served in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of its Federal Assembly.

“How can Putin's trust be more important than the trust of the people?” protester Zahar Zaripov said in an interview with Deutsche Welle. “Our governor was dismissed by Putin, because he supposedly lost his trust. And what about our trust? We were the ones who elected the governor, not Putin!”

The protests have since spread to other cities in the region, such as Novosibirsk and Vladivostok. Protests in Russia’s Far East are rare; most take place in Moscow or St. Petersburg, where the Kremlin is generally able to exercise its control much more easily.

Many of the protesters not only view the ongoing demonstrations as a show of support for Furgal, but as an act of defiance against a corrupt presidential administration. A little over four weeks ago, President Putin won an allegedly fraudulent constitutional referendum which would allow him to hold his current position through 2036.

“When a person lives not knowing how things are supposed to be, he thinks things are good,” protester Artyom Aksyonov said in an interview with The New York Times. “But when you open your eyes to the truth, you realize things were not good. This was all an illusion.”

Another protester, Alexander Gogolev, expressed his disdain toward the Kremlin in an interview with The Guardian.

“The center is sucking resources from the Far East,” Gogolev said. “[And we get] nothing in return.”

This defiance toward the Putin administration has not been limited to the protesters in Khabarovsk Krai. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, protested the results of the constitutional referendum as well as the arrest of Furgal.

“We gave you the constitution, and you’re putting us in handcuffs,” Zhirinovsky said. “Shameless! You are sitting in high office and start acting like Stalin!”

Zhirinovsky later signaled that his supporters in the Federal Assembly may resign in protest if the situation does not improve.

Governor Furgal is currently in custody in a Moscow jail as he awaits his trial, which does not yet have a definitive date but may take place as early as Sept. 9. Protests are expected to continue throughout Khabarovsk Krai for the foreseeable future.

Jacob Sutherland

is a recent graduate from the University of California San Diego where he majored in Political Science and minored in Spanish Language Studies. He previously served as the News Editor for The UCSD Guardian, and hopes to shed light on social justice issues in his work.

Female Saudi Arabian Activist on Death Row for Peaceful Protest

On August 21, 2018, Saudi Arabian public prosecutors announced that they were considering the death penalty for five Saudi Shia activists. One of the five is Israa al-Ghomgham, a female activist who could become the first woman sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia. Ghomgham, along with four other Saudi Shia activists including her husband, engaged in peaceful demonstrations for Shia rights beginning in 2011 during the rise of the Arab Spring, which led to their 2015 arrests.

Saudi Arabian Flag. Iqbal Osman. Wikimedia Commons

“Any execution is appalling, but seeking the death penalty for activists like Israa al-Ghomgham, who are not even accused of violent behavior, is monstrous,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, who directs the Middle East sector of Human Rights Watch. “Every day, the Saudi monarchy’s unrestrained despotism makes it harder for its public relations teams to spin the fairy tale of ‘reform’ to allies and international business.”

Responding to peaceful protests with the death penalty is compromising both to proponents of human decency and order, and these actions are symptomatic of a larger illness. If Saudi Arabia is to continue to suppress and murder its own citizens, its actions could lead to its internal combustion. To preserve its tenuous position of prosperity, the Saudi Arabian government must honor the voices of its insurgents—or at least allow them to live.

Saudi Arabia, a desert country in the Middle East said to be the birthplace of Islam, holds a complex position at the pinnacle of capital and culture. It has the world’s third highest national total estimated value of natural resources. It is home to the world’s largest oil company, and it has been the proponent of various reform agendas, significant amount of money invested in solar energy. It is also ruled by the ultraconservative Wahhabi religious movement, which is part of Sunni Islam.

It has shown support for counterterrorism and revolutionary liberal and Arab Spring ideals and has supported rebel forces in Syria and Yemen, but internally it has been a breeding ground for violent forms of radical Islam, placing it at a crux between the most progressive and oppressive sides of the ideological spectrum. The nation’s 32-year-old king, Mohammed bin Salman, has been pushing to modernize his country, opening movie theatres and allowing women to drive for the first time—but his actions towards protestors despite his presentation of liberalism rings eerily close to the actions of Bashar al Assad, Syrian president who also began his reign by encouraging Westernization in Syria before cracking down on protestors and unleashing a bloody civil war. Under Salman, critics of the Saudi Arabian regime have been arrested in scores, and 58 people are currently on death row. Many of these prisoners are women, often arrested for protesting the country’s guardianship system, which places Saudi Arabian men in almost complete control of their daughters’ or wives’ lives.

Israa al-Ghomgham and her husband were arrested on December 5, 2015, and are on trial at the Specialized Criminal Court, which Saudi Arabia installed in 2008 and which has drawn expense criticism from human rights activists, sentencing eight protestors to death in 2014 and 14 in 2016. Currently human rights campaigners are working to secure her freedom and life.

EDEN ARIELLE GORDON is a writer, musician, and avid traveler. She attends Barnard College in New York.

“I Am For Russia”

What you should know about the Pussy Riot World Cup demonstration.

MLADEN ANTONOV/GETTY IMAGES

On July 15 during the middle of the World Cup final between France and Croatia, four protesters dressed as Russian police officers dashed onto the field, briefly halting the progress of the game.

In a statement made on twitter, the punk protest group Pussy Riot claimed responsibility for the disturbance.

Pussy Riot was founded in 2011 as a feminist protest punk rock group and has since become a powerful symbol of Russian resistance to the Putin regime. One of the groups most well known projects was their “punk prayer” protest in which members of the group in colourful balaclavas sang an anti-Putin political prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior during the lead up to Russia’s 2012 election. The song and location of the protest were meant to serve as a commentary on the co-dependent relationship of the church and state in Russia. In response, two of the group's members were jailed for almost two years.

The New Yorker writes that in Pussy Riot’s statement on twitter claiming responsibility for the protest, the group cited Russian Poet Aleksandrovich Prigov’s work contrasting the difference between “heavenly” police officers who care for a utopian society, and “earthly” police officers who maintain corrupt systems. According to a video statement made by the group, “the Heavenly Policeman will protect a baby in her sleep, while the earthly policeman persecutes political prisoners and jails people for sharing and liking posts on social media.” In The New Yorker, Masha Gessen compares the group’s intrusion on the soccer match to the police’s intrusion in the everyday lives of citizens. She writes that “the beautiful world of sport has its bubble punctured by people running and flailing haphazardly, intent on destruction.” According to Pussy Riot’s own statement, “the earthly policeman, who intervenes in the game every day and knows no rules, is destroying our world.”

The police uniforms worn by the group carry a powerful symbolic message, but were also instrumental in enabling the group to carry out the protest. "No one stopped us," Pyotr Verzilov, a member of Pussy Riot told the BBC, "I know the Russian psychology: a police uniform is sacred. Nobody will ask for your permit or accreditation. I pretended to be yelling into my phone - 'Nikolayevich, where do you want me to look for them?!' - and I gestured to the steward to let me through the gate. He opened it."

Along with the explanation of the symbolism of their protest, Pussy Riot presented this list of demands:

1. Let all political prisoners free.

2. Not imprison for “likes”.

3. Stop Illegal arrests on rallies.

4. Allow political competition in the country.

5. Not fabricate criminal accusations and not keep people in jails for no reason.

6. Turn the earthly policeman into the heavenly policeman.

Shortly following the match, the Pussy Riot members who participated in the protest were sentenced to 15 days in jail and a 3 year ban from Russian sporting events. A video clip tweeted by anti-Putin activist Alexei Navalny shows the interrogation of two of the group's members. In the clip the police officer accuses them of bringing shame to Russia and says, "sometimes I regret that it's not 1937," referring to the Great Purge under Stalin in which at least a million people were executed. As the interrogation continues Verzilov says what become the most poignant words of the video, "I am for Russia, just like you — if you are for Russia."

The Pussy Riot protest is a reminder of the conditions millions of Russian people live under everyday.

EMMA BRUCE is an undergraduate student studying English and marketing at Emerson College in Boston. While not writing she explores the nearest museums, reads poetry, and takes classes at her local dance studio. She is passionate about sustainable travel and can't wait to see where life will take her.