Exploring Civil Disobedience Movement of Civilians in Thailand 2020-2021: Context, Conflict and Nonviolent Action

Abstract

This study explores the civil disobedience movement of civilians in Thailand from 2020 to 2021, a critical period in Thailand's recent history marked by widespread civil disobedience and political unrest. This period is pivotal for research due to its significant implications. Beyond addressing the contextual and conflictual aspects, the research examines nonviolent action by identifying its types and methods and categorizing them within an applied framework. Using qualitative methodology, the study gathered primary and secondary data for analysis. The theoretical framework was applied flexibly, allowing for a nuanced examination and integration of the data into the established framework. Consequently, five types and thirteen methods were identified within three overarching categories of nonviolent action - protest and persuasion, noncooperation, and intervention. Five types comprised protests and demonstrations, online activism and campaigns, general strikes, the occupation of public spaces, and persuasion. Then, methods were marches on public thoroughfares, signs, slogans and demands, speeches, artwork, symbolic acts of resistance, the dissemination of information about the movement, forming networks and alliances, boycotts, political demands as part of strikes, disrupting and disobeying normal societal functions, drawing attention, and blocking public spaces through public rallies. The arguments in the study that the 2020-2021 Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) of civilians in Thailand was not only a nonviolent action but also involved violent behavior and that the nonviolent CDM failed due to unmet political demands were conclusively validated.