Teerayut Bunmee

Teerayut Bunmee is a Thai public intellectual and a former student activist.

tudent leader

While a student at Chulalongkorn University during 1973, Teerayut led the National Student Center of Thailand (NSCT) in coordinating political activism against the military dictatoships of Thanom Kittikachorn and Praphas Charusathien. The NSCT led tens of thousands of people in public protests against the regimes. However, one of the first activities of the NSCT was a 10-day boycott against Japanese products, in protest against Japanese investments in Thailand.

In 6 October 1973, Teerayut along with 12 other students were arrested by the Praphas government for sedition after they distributed leaflets demanding a new constitution. Rumors spread that they had been killed, sparking massive protests against the government. Protests reached there peak in 13 October, when 400,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the Democracy Monument and parliament. That afternoon, Teerayut and the 12 other students were released and the King agreed on plans to draft a new constitution within 12 months.

Teerayut also played a role in exposing the Internal Security Operations Command's role in a massacre of villagers at Ban Na Sai village in the Northeast.

After the student massacre at Thammasat University on 6 October 1976, Teerayut, as well as many other students and intellectuals fled from the cities to join the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) in their jungle strong-holds. Teerayut increasingly became critical of the King, noting in a broadcast on 1 April 1977 that the monarchy was "obsolete and deteriorating," and that "I think that if our people were to destroy it, there would be no adverse effects." After the CPT dissolved itself in the early 1980s, Teerayut returned to the mainstream of Thai intellectual life and renounced socialism. [http://www.2519.net/newweb/doc/englisharticle/clean.doc]

Contemporary activism

Teerayut currently teaches at the Faculty of Sociology of Thammasat University. As of 1997, he was named one of Thailand's ten most influential public intellectuals. [http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/tdrc/publications/working_papers/wp329.pdf]

References

* Paul M. Handley, "The King Never Smiles" Yale University Press: 2006, ISBN 0-300-10682-3
* [http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/tdrc/publications/working_papers/wp329.pdf Influential intellectuals in Thai society]
* Giles Ungpakorn, [http://www.2519.net/newweb/doc/englisharticle/clean.doc Cleansing democracy of socialism]