Hundreds of scholars from universities across North America, Europe and Asia are sending letters of appeal to high-level administrators at Chulalongkorn University (CU) asking them to defend academic freedom and stop the attack on Dr Nattapoll Chaiching.

Many people have said that what the students said on 10 August were sincere expressions of opinion that remained within the lines. People have said that the stance of the university should be to protect freedom of thought and expression to the farthest degree acceptable by the society at the time. They have said that the university should not be afraid of unconventional ideas and provocative thoughts, and, as much as is possible, must protect students from threats from the state. I agree completely with all of these views.

In what follows below, I offer a concise picture of the dynamics and significance of Article 112 over the preceding decade. Some of the sources cannot be fully cited as it may harm those who provided information or defendants in ongoing cases.

1. The months of May and June mark several key milestones in Thai history. There is June 1932 (the People’s Revolution) and June 1946 (the assassination of King Rama VIII), the two bloody crackdowns in May 1992 and 2010, and the coup in May 2014.

27 years later, a renowned historian’s 1988 groundbreaking book on Thai royal nationalism and geography is still garnering new interpretations and discussion.    Thongchai Winichakul, a professor of Southeast Asian History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison whose best-known work is Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation, offered authorial insights at a public discussion held at Thammasat University on 3 October 2015.