“I want to show that I don’t like dictatorship and want true democracy,” said one 17-year-old student who joined the protest at a government school on Monday and said she did not want to be named for fear of reprisals after pressure from teachers.Įducation Minister Nataphol Teepsuwan said at an educational fair in Bangkok on Monday that students had the right to express themselves and should not be punished, but also warned that there was a limit to how far they should go. Some students have also called for reforms to the monarchy, once a taboo subject. Students also wore white ribbons to show their support for protesters, who seek Prayuth’s departure, a new constitution and an end to the harassment of activists.Ī hashtag that translates as #WhiteRibbonAgainstDictatorship was used nearly 1 million times on Twitter while others trending included #ThreeFingersForNationalAnthem. The three-finger salute, inspired by the popular Hunger Games films, has been a symbol of calls for democracy since Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha first took power in a 2014 coup.ĭemonstrations that began on university campuses have taken place almost daily since mid-July in an increasing challenge to the ruling establishment in the Southeast Asian country that has long been dominated by the army and the monarchy. It seems that films and comics, rather than conventional political ideologies, are the texts from which modern radicalism takes its imagery.Īdopting the contentious gesture, though, seems to have finally earned Thailand's protesters international media attention, which was lacking in the first two weeks since the coup.Pupils in at least eight high schools in Thailand raised three-fingered “Hunger Games” salutes during the national anthem on Tuesday in a sign of spreading support for student-led anti-government protests. The Thai protesters' resort to the world of The Hunger Games for a subversive symbol is reminiscent of Occupy's use of the Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta. When the best political imagery available comes from a corny series of paranoid science fiction films that are retro-1970s science fiction at best, and vacuous adolescent fantasy at worst, there is something missing. ![]() Thailand's junta officials, Time reports, are reserving the right to jail people who raise their hand in the salute and contemplating whether they should make it an officially illegal gesture.Īlthough the three-finger salute has come to mean something to large groups of people thanks to the popularity of the Hunger Games, as the writer Jonathan Jones points out on the Guardian, the Hunger Games is a franchise designed to make money, not "a manual for changing the world." Here's Jones: ![]() In the dystopian world of the Hunger Games, that gesture is enough to warrant execution on the spot. Anyone who has watched The Hunger Games-and that's millions upon millions of people-is familiar with the series' symbol of political dissent: three fingers held up, with the thumb and pinky folded. Now, Thai citizens protesting the recent military coup, too, have taken up that gesture, citing inspiration from Katniss and her fictional friends.Īlready, scores of those proffering the salute during weekend street protests have been dragged off by troops, in scenes eerily reminiscent of the Suzanne Collins novels and movie franchise, which depict a dystopian future society ruled by the totalitarian Panem regime.Īnd over the weekend, the sight of unarmed and peaceful protesters being detained for flashing three fingers - including a woman dragged into a taxi by plainclothes police in tourist-thronged central Bangkok - did little to assuage fears of what the military may have in store.
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