Exiled, jailed or silenced: Thailand's youth protest leaders paying the price of activism but most have 'no regrets'

BANGKOK — Benjamaporn Nivas, 19, sells bubble tea in Vancouver while taking adult education classes to make up for her interrupted schooling.

It has been two years since she has seen her friends and family in Thailand, and four years since she co-founded a student group to reform Thai education.

The mass protests she helped to lead eventually challenged the status quo and demanded reform of Thailand's powerful monarchy.

But she paid the price for her activism.

"I never imagined I would end up so far away," she told The Straits Times in a video call from Canada, where she received asylum after fleeing a possible lese majeste conviction in 2022.

"Sometimes I feel sad and miss home. But I am safe. There are things which I had to give up in exchange for that, and it was painful. But I have to keep going."

Four years after student protests first broke out across South-east Asia's second largest economy — challenging the then military-linked government and eminence of King Maha Vajiralongkorn — the young people who drew thousands of protesters onto the streets are grappling with prosecutions that have driven some into exile, others to incarceration and many more to silence.

According to advocacy group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, more than 1,900 people have been charged — for taking part in public assemblies or expressing their political opinion — since youth protests first broke out in July 2020.

Among them were 272 people charged with lese majeste — an offence that carries a jail term of up to 15 years.

At least 126 of the 155 lese majeste cases known to be concluded so far have resulted in jail sentences. Prominent protest leader and activist lawyer Arnon Nampa, 40, is serving 14 years in prison for the royal insult cases