Opposing militarism

Readers may be surprised to learn that one of the top-5 most read articles at The Guardian yesterday was on Thailand. “Thai conscientious objector risks jail in rare refusal of military service” is about Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal’s refusal to participate in the conscription ballot. The Guardian says this is “a rare protest as a conscientious objector.” It adds that if he is “prosecuted, it is believed he could become the first person in Thailand to be imprisoned for avoiding the draft through civil disobedience. The offence carries a maximum sentence of three years.”

Netiwit in 2017. Clipped from The Nation

Netiwit believes the system the military uses to get its “recruits” is “outdated, ineffective and unfairly affected the poorest, who were less well placed to find ways to avoid the draft.” Many conscripts end up as slave-like servants to senior officers and their families and firms.

The article points out that “research by Amnesty International found evidence that new conscripts face violence, humiliation and sexual assault…”.

Netiwit makes the important point that conscription is a “part of a wider system that undermined the country’s democracy.” He observed that military service “brainwashes people,”adding: “I think that military service is one thing that holds our country to be ruled by the military.”

The activist “first announced his objection to military service as a teenager, after the military seized power in a coup in 2014.”