ABSTRACT
On May 22, 2014, led by General Prayuth Chan-ocha, a junta calling itself the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) carried out the twelfth successful coup in Thailand since the end of the absolute monarchy on June 24, 1932. This chapter begins with the strictures placed on public assembly, let alone protest, by the NCPO, to highlight the very significance of the existence of the New Democracy Movement (NDM). The NDM activists were only held for one period of detention before the military court decided to release them. The lack of crowds in the streets was a combination of the fear of likely arrest and the ongoing overt support for the regime whose existence was indicated by the People’s Democratic Reform Committee protests (PDRC) that preceded the coup. The NCPO aims to prevent precisely the kind of protest successfully used by the PDRC to create the conditions for regime change.
