Banned Books Week is a holiday near and dear to PPT’s heart. Observed from 25 September to 2 October this year, the week is about preserving intellectual freedom. In the view of the American Library Association, one of the sponsors, this means ” … the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week (BBW). BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.”
Last year we urged readers to read banned books, write to Darunee Charnchoengsilpakul and Suwicha Thakor, and otherwise work to keep thinking, reading and writing free in Thailand and around the world. A year later, although Suwicha was pardoned, Darunee is still in jail. As the recent additional charges against Chiranuch Premchaiporn indicate, thought and speech are becoming less, not more, unfree.
This year, PPT has a gift to our readers for BBW. Seven months after the 6 October 1976 massacre, the Ministry of the Interior, led by then-Minister of Interior Samak Sundaravej, issued a list of 100 books that people were prohibited to have, and therefore to read. Some well-known volumes, such as Thai translations of State and Revolution, by V.I. Lenin (รัฐกับการปฎิวัติ โดย วี.ไอ. เลนิน) and Mao Tse-tung’s Four Essays on Philosophy (นิพนธ์ปรัชญา ๔ เรื่องของประธาน โดย เหมาเจ๋อตุง) are present. Others, that PPT would like to read, such as the Isan Revolutionary Group’s Isan Revolutionary Treatise (คัมภีร์นักปฎิวัติ โดย กลุ่มอิสานปฎิวัติ), are present as well. Our gift to our readers is a PDF of the list of 100 banned books. There is nothing secret about the list — it was published in the ราชกิจจานุเบกษา/Royal Thai Government Gazette, on 11 March 1977. Possession of one of these books was enough to land one in trouble, and perhaps in detention.View the whole list here.
Today, there is no clear, published list of what Thai citizens cannot read or think. Instead, the line is invisible, and one does not know it exists until one has crossed it.
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