The decision by the Prayut Chan-ocha administration to begin a program of intimidation and arrest against anti-government student protesters could backfire as students say the move has united the movement and hardened their resolve.
For the past two months, student-led protests have engulfed the nation with rallies carried out throughout the country demanding constitutional change and fresh elections.
Students have touched upon subjects previously thought taboo to discuss in Thai society.
In response, police and state security forces have pursued a program of intimidation, incarceration and litigation designed to quell the tide of the protests. (Read more here)
But the heavy handed tactics have backfired according to student protesters and rights groups and played into the hand of student protesters who have previously accused the government of acting like a police state.
”The arrest shows that the government is worried and acting like a dictatorship,” said Parit “Penguin” Chiwarak, a student leader who has been arrested by the government.
“But this will only make us more resolute and bring more students out than before,” he told Thai Enquirer.
According to some student protesters the government’s tactics have also forced different groups of students to keep close contact, bringing a sense of coordination that didn’t previously exist.
“Our protest was pretty isolated from the rest of Thailand at the beginning,” said a protest leader from Pattani who asked not to be named. “But because of the government’s arrests, we have reached out to the leaders in Bangkok and around the country and they have reached out to us.”
According to the protest leader, there is now a sense of community and cooperation that had not existed before the government’s heavy-handed tactics.
Government threatened
It is unlikely that the government will slow down its intimidation program as sources inside the cabinet say that the administration is at odds over how to end the student protest.
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha told reporters on Wednesday that protesters were causing the country to be ‘engulfed in flames.’
The prime minister said he had heard accusations that he came to power illegitimately but he warned the nation that he had to take power in a military coup because of years of factionalism and street protests.
He said that Thailand was in danger of falling back into a destructive cycle, something which he has said he he saved the country from.
