Walk follows publication that is prohibited by the government
PUBLISHED: 23 Sep 2024 at 16: 30
A planned lecture and book release for a guide about the role of the military in Thailand at Chulalongkorn University has been abandoned. The plan was to use its campus to host the event.
The Jim Thompson Museum will host the seminar on safety and the power of the armed troops that was scheduled for Friday at the university, according to Puangthong Pawakapan, an academic at the Political Science Faculty, in a Facebook post on Monday.
The university professor informed me last week that school officials would not allow me to release the book Infiltrating Society: The Thai Military’s Internal Security Affairs without any justification, she wrote.
Despite the change of location, she claimed, the International Relations Department also supports the occasion, while posing a danger to intellectual freedom.
The book launch set for Friday is for the Thai translation of her acclaimed work of the same subject. The influential Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore published the English edition in 2021. The book is produced in Thailand by Equal Sky Books.
The release comes from a two-year study project that won awards from the school in 2023 and Foreign Affairs publication in 2022.
On May 24, the faculty of the school presented her with a congratulations on the award on its Facebook website.
The place shift comes less than two days after the Internal Security Operations Command criticized her on September 14 prior to the launch, accusing Ms. Puangthong of “having no qualifications and experience on protection affairs.”
Isoc urged that the text and all associated forums become banned to stop “public misinformation and harm to the armed forces ‘ reputation”. It demanded that the school investigate her morals and threatened legal action against the artist.  ,
Two days later, Ms. Puangthong claimed that experts from various international organizations who were studying Thai politics, the defense, and surveillance had scrutinized her studies and publication. She also demanded that Isoc send representatives to the platform to discuss their views in public rather than attempting to ban her and stifle discussion of the subject.
Listeners in the platform on Friday include Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, who co-founded the disbanded Future Forward Party, and Prajk Kongkirati of the Political Science Faculty at Thammasat University. They are well-known when vocal critics of military coups and political intervention by the armed forces.