Students enter prison to support the 14 embattled anti-junta activists

Young activists entered a cage installed in front of Thammasat University to support the 14 anti-junta activists

The students activists from the League of Liberal Thammasat for Democracy (LLTD) on Wednesday, 1 July 2015, placed a cage as a replica of prison cells on the pavement in front of the wall of Thammasat University, Tha Prachan Campus, in Bangkok.

At 14:40 pm several students started to enter the cage to take pictures and post it on social medias to start a viral campaign to support the 14 anti-junta activists who are now in prison for participating in peaceful gatherings to commemorate the 2014 coup d’état on 22 May.      

According to the LLTD, every one can enter the cage to symbolically show support for the activists under custody.

“Under the current circumstance, when our freedom of expressions is limited in public spaces. It is as if our lives outside prisons are being controlled under an invisible cage at all times without noticing it to the point that we might think that it is normal,” the LLTD group’s wrote on the group’s facebook profile.

Students enter a cage in front of the Tha Prachan Campus of Thammasat University to show support for the 14 embattled anti-junta activists under custody on 1 July 2015 (courtesy of LLTD)

On Sunday, 28 June 2015, academics, activists, students and many others came to the same wall at Thammasat University and attached placards and post-it with messages to support the 14 activists.

One of the placards is a message from Kasian Techapeera, a renowned anti-junta political scientist of Thammasat and Chulalongkorn University, which reads ‘I’m proud to have been your lecturer’.

Some other placards attached to the campus wall read ‘Release the 14 student activists unconditionally’, ‘Nobody is behind this [anti-junta activities] except ordinary people who love democracy’, ‘Dictatorship will be destroyed and democracy will triumph’.

Bangkok’s Military Court on 28 June granted custody permission to detain 14 student activists who are accused of violating the junta’s National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) Order No. 7/2014, which prohibits any political gathering of more than five persons for holding symbolic events to commemorate the 2014 coup d’état on 22 May.

In addition, the 14 are also charged under Article 116 of the Criminal Code, the law on sedition, for holding anti-junta political activities. If found guilty, the activists might face prison terms up to seven years.

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