While 2020 marked an unprecedented transition into the COVID-19 pandemic, it also saw a resurgence of anti-government protests spearheaded by Thailand’s youth. Over the past ninety years, elected Thai governments have been recurringly supplanted by military regimes. Notably, the demonstrations which began last year are the largest since the coup of 2014, seeing a diverse array of activists emerge under the banner of groups like Free Youth.[1]Catalysed by the forced disbanding of the progressive, anti-military, Future Forward Party, the movement has been united in demands for a new constitution, the dissolution of Parliament and an end to political intimidation.[2] Moreover, protests have been marked by larger socioeconomic concerns. In 2018, the government advised that “72 percent of university graduates could either be unemployed or working in jobs unrelated to their degrees because of automation by 2030.”[3] Such precarity has only been entrenched by the pandemic, with feelings of dislocation exacerbated by the use of COVID-19 as a pretext for increased crackdowns on civil liberties. In light of this, social media offers itself as a mobilization tool capable of generating greater local and transnational support. At the same time, however, it has become a battleground of censorship and suppression in its own right. Protest developments in Thailand, and their intersection with COVID-19, raise a number of questions about the sustainability of online protest tactics and the future of dissent under growing digital authoritarianism.
In October, Human Rights Watch identified the Thai government’s declaration of a state of emergency as a “pretext for a crackdown on peaceful demonstrations.”[4] While Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha asserted that protests “undermined measures to curtail Covid-19,” the broad powers granted to authorities permitted the arrest of individuals without charge and their informal detention.[5] Notably, the hours immediately following the declaration saw the arrest of at least 22 activists in front of Bangkok’s Government House – including several protest leaders.[6] In the digital space, Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society subsequently announced the government’s obtainment of a court order to close down the online TV channel Voice TV across all platforms.[7] Under investigation for coverage of the protest movement, the channel was found to have breached the Computer Crime Act by uploading “false information.”[8] While the judiciary has since lifted the suspension following legal challenges, this sweeping action of the government is indicative of the larger challenges faced by protestors encountering both conventional and digital forms of oppression.
The government continues to block the website change.org, and its wielding influence over media giants like Facebook does not bode well for the mobilization of dissenting opinions.[9] Upon an earlier request, Facebook answered the demands of the Thai government to block the page Royalist Marketplace – a satirical outlet where users post fictitious sales ads related to the monarchy.[10] However, the tech giant has subsequently condemned requests for censorship, acknowledging that this activity “contravenes international human rights law.”[11] What emerges from this tenuous degree of accountability on the part of the private sector is the entrenchment of precarity and complicity in forms of digital authoritarianism. With COVID-19 and oppressive government tactics shuttering the conventional public square, a lack of commitment to internet freedom on the part of service providers threatens to clasp Thai youth in a protest deadlock.
Removed from this dynamic, social media offers itself as a powerful tool in the construction of transnational solidarity. The galvanizing of Asian youths around the hashtag #MilkTeaAlliance is a prime example. What emerged as a counter to the nationalistic behaviour of Chinese internet users has become a broader movement, enveloping “people across Asia who are fed up with expanding authoritarianism and democratic reforms.”[12] ‘Netizens’ from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand and other states have grown increasingly cognizant of each other’s struggles for democracy, with student activists in Hong Kong even organizing physical rallies in solidarity with Thai protestors.[13] The sharing of content and protest strategies through these hashtags not only works to garner international attention, but in doing so forges a cross-border network of youths capable of pursuing structural reforms. The proliferation of democratic ambitions promises to construct a new kind of transnational, regional identity upon which Asian youths can make more powerful demands of their governments.
Nonetheless, Thai youth remain between lodged between an unaccountable system of global neoliberalism and their state’s unwavering military regime. The extent to which transnational solidarity building can aid in the transcendence of such obstacles remains to be seen, but the experiences of Hong Kong offer valuable insight. As Wilfred Chan asserts in his article, “neoliberalism has never been a framework for transnational solidarity as much as a self-serving logic of global exploitation.”[14] Ultimately, it is up to Thai youths and their regional supporters to develop a new and more egalitarian network. As authoritarianism attempts to co-opt the COVID-19 pandemic, it is more important than ever that social media giants remain accountable and commit to the maintenance of online freedom.
Jonathan Banfield is a copy-editor for the Southeast Asia Section of the Synergy Journal. He is a 4th-year student at the University of Toronto majoring in Peace, Conflict and Justice and minoring in Contemporary Asian Studies and Political Science. Born and raised in Hong Kong, his primary academic interests include democratization and the politics of Chinese development initiatives in the greater South East Asian region and beyond.
Bibliography
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[1] Richard Paddock and Muktita Suhartono, “Thailand’s Leader Offers End to Crackdown on Pro-Democracy Protestors,” The New York Times, October 21, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/world/asia/thailand-protest-prayuth-emergency.html
[2] Hannah Beech, “Protests Grow in Thailand, Where Speaking Out Can Be Perilous,” The New York Times, August 16, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/world/asia/thailand-protests-democracy-monarchy.html
[3] David Hutt, “Thailand’s Lost Youth,” The Diplomat, April 21, 2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/thailands-lost-youth/
[4] “Thailand: Emergency Decree Pretext for Crackdown,” Human Rights Watch, accessed February 25, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/10/15/thailand-emergency-decree-pretext-crackdown.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] “Thailand shuts down online TV channel, as protests continue,” Aljazeera, accessed February 25, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/21/thailand-shuts-down-online-tv-channel-as-protests-continue.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Rodion Ebbighausen, “Thailand’s protests and their digital dimension,” DW, October 18, 2020, https://www.dw.com/en/thailands-protests-and-their-digital-dimension/a-55315079.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Hannah Beech, “Facebook Plans Legal Action After Thailand Tells It to Mute Critics,” The New York Times, August 25, 2020 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/world/asia/thailand-protests-democracy-monarchy.html.
[12] Timothy McLaughlin, “How Milk Tea Became an Anti-China Symbol,” The Atlantic, October 13, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/10/milk-tea-alliance-anti-china/616658/.
[13] Dymples Leong, “Commentary: The Milk Tea Alliance sweeping through Thailand is a force to be reckoned with,” Channel News Asia, November 16, 2020, https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/milk-tea-alliance-thailand-hong-kong-taiwan-protest-prayut-china-13534668.
[14] Wilfred Chan, “Hong Kong’s Fight for Life,” Dissent Magazine, August 8, 2019,https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/hong-kongs-fight-for-life.