Page 106 - The lraternational Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand.indd

The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XV-2023

1. The Student and Civilian Uprising of 1973
The student and civilian uprising of 1973 – the so-called “students’ revolution”
– reached its peak on 14 October 1973. Students had already often held meetings to call

upon the military dictatorship, which had controlled the country since 1959, to reinstate
a democratic constitution. When the military government refused all negotiations and
instead arrested 13 students at Ramkamhaeng University, thousands of students and
civilians gathered in a massive demonstration, which ran from Thammasart Univer-

sity to Democracy Monument in the centre of Bangkok and gained increasingly more
support overnight. On the morning of 14 October, the police and then the military used
force against the demonstrators. Many could only save themselves by entering royal
grounds.

That the uprising did not become an even greater bloodbath was due on one

hand to the fact that the majority of the military refused orders to fire and on the oth-
er hand to the high respect held for the king, who had asked for the demonstration to
be brought to an end.

This students’ revolution marked the beginning of a new epoch in Thailand’s
political and social life. Thai scholars speak of a new age in which democracy gains

ground in Thailand, the military putsches no longer function and civilians gain a new
level of awareness.

What in fact emerged in numerous explanations on social and political issues,
especially with regard to civil rights, was a new political awareness particularly in the
intellectual middle classes but also in the working classes and farming communities.

Demonstrations took place on a regular basis. They supported the prime

minister on the abolition of American military bases in the country, but they also led
to protest actions from different trade and social groups that reclaimed their rights or
demanded social support. It was a time of the “blossoming of student political
activities”, but it also led to several punishments of communists and even to the mur-

der of trade union leaders. Students were accused of being supported from both the
right and left political groups outside the universities. As a whole, we can compare the
situation in Thailand from 1973 to 1976 according to its ideological conflicts with
the incidents in Germany during the Weimar Republic between 1919 and 1923

(Watanangura, 2012).

98 “Littérature engagée” in Thailand in the Revolutionary Years from 1973 to 1976