A10 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2020
YBANGKOK — The cream-colored
stretch Rolls-Royce limousine crawled
past the angry crowds. The queen of
Thailand smiled.
But what Queen Suthida Vajira-
longkorn Na Ayudhya saw on Wednes-
day, on a road in Bangkok that has been
used for royal processions, may have
been sobering.
Antigovernment protesters yelled
“my taxes!” referring to their personal
contributions to royal coffers. The police
held them back but could not hide the
demonstrators’ defiant salutes.
For months, pro-democracy pro-
testers have gathered by the thousands
to call for reforms to the monarchy and
the military, influential institutions that
have dominated Thailand’s power struc-
ture for decades.
But the royal limousine’s route on
Wednesday was the first time that mem-
bers of the nuclear royal family had got-
ten such a close look at the faces of Thais
who are openly questioning the mon-
archy’s exalted position in the country.
Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn
Bodindradebayavarangkun and some of
his immediate family — including the
queen, who is his fourth wife, and his
youngest son, the heir apparent — live
most of the year in Germany.
The simple act of a royal motorcade
driving near an antigovernment protest
might not seem a watershed moment.
But Thailand is no ordinary constitu-
tional monarchy. It is bound by some of
the world’s strictest lèse-majesté laws
criminalizing criticism of the crown. Dur-
ing public occasions, Thais are expected
to stand for an anthem praising some of
the richest royals on the planet. When po-
liticians are given an audience with the
king, they typically prostrate themselves
and crawl forward in a sideways slither.
But as the protest movement has
strengthened over the past three
months, taboos surrounding the mon-
archy have fallen in rapid succession. In
Parliament, opposition legislators are
demanding an investigation of royal
budgets. (After his father’s death in 2016,
King Maha Vajiralongkorn took personal
control of the crown’s assets.)
In cinemas, people no longer feel
obliged to stand for a photo montage of
the king that precedes each screening.
And protesters, old and young alike,
are demanding that the 10th king of the
resting peaceful protesters, listen to
their views, and allow them to freely and
safely express their visions for the fu-
ture,” Brad Adams, Asia director for Hu-
man Rights Watch, said in a statement.
The security presence on Wednesday
was formidable. About 15,000 police offi-
cers were sent to the protest area near
Democracy Monument, built to com-
memorate the end of absolute monarchy
in 1932. Public buses were parked to
block the path toward Government
House, which holds the offices of Prime
Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the archi-
tect of a 2014 military coup who remains
the nation’s leader.
Late on Wednesday night, a spokes-
man for the prime minister’s office said
that Mr. Prayuth had instructed the po-
lice to take action against those who in-
terrupt royal motorcades or engage in
any other acts considered insulting to the
monarchy.
Then early Thursday, the government
ordered a ban on gatherings of five or
more people in Bangkok, an official docu-
ment said, according to Reuters. The doc-
ument said there was a ban on the publi-
cation of news or online messages that
“could create fear,” affect national securi-
ty or damage public morale. It said the
government could also ban access to any
places designated by authorities.
Multiple elections in Thailand have
been nullified by army coups justified as
necessary to protect the monarchy. The
putsch six years ago was followed by the
passage of an army-drafted Constitution
that further eroded democratic institu-
tions.
The protesters have called for a new
charter and for fresh elections, after a na-
tional vote last year that was dismissed
by some international observers as nei-
ther free nor fair.
“We have been imprisoned in a special
prison called Thailand for a long time,”
said Attapon Buapat, another protest
speaker.
The protest movement has woven to-
gether disparate strands of dissatisfac-
tion, ranging from frustration with
school uniform rules to anger at the lav-
ish lifestyle of the king at a time when a
coronavirus ban on international tour-
ism has hit Thailand’s economy hard.
On Wednesday evening, after dark fell,
a group of protesters tried to extend part
of the rally toward a royal palace. But
rows of yellow-shirted royalists stood
guard. The protesters fell back.As the crowds for both sides swelled on
Wednesday, some people in a country
conditioned to regular bouts of political
violence feared that clashes might break
out. But aside from a few scuffles, the
antigovernment rally, which pushed past
barricades to march toward Government
House, was peaceful.
King Maha Vajiralongkorn is now back
in Bangkok for weeks, a rarity for a mon-
arch who normally spends no more than
a couple of days in the country he reigns
over.
Last week, Heiko Maas, the German
foreign minister, called into question the
Thai king’s engagement in politics while
living in Germany. “We have made it
clear that politics concerning Thailand
should not be conducted from German
soil,” said Mr. Maas in a parliamentary
session.
Street protests have regularly gripped
Thailand over the past two decades. The
security crackdowns on some of those
mass rallies have been bloody, with doz-
ens of people killed. Over the past few
years, outspoken dissidents who fled
overseas after criticizing the monarchy
and the military have disappeared. Some
of their bodies have washed up with obvi-
ous signs of foul play.
“Thailand’s international friends
should call on the government to stop ar-Chakri Dynasty, who was formally
crowned last year with a 16-pound Great
Crown of Victory, not be positioned above
the country’s Constitution.
“We are going to fight for democracy,
fight for freedom, fight for the equality of
us as human beings,” a protest leader
popularly known as Justin Samutprakan
said on Wednesday. “We will not bow,
prostrate, crawl ever again.”
“As humans, no one is bigger than any-
one,” he added. “No one has power more
than others.”
The protesters say they will camp out
near Thailand’s halls of power for three
days.
Dozens of protest leaders, many of
them students, have been arrested in re-
cent weeks and charged with crimes like
sedition that carry imprisonment for up
to seven years. Early on Thursday, two
protest leaders, Arnon Nampa and
Panupong Jadnok, were arrested, ac-
cording to the Thai Lawyers for Human
Rights group, as reported by Reuters.
The rally on Wednesday also brought
out many royalist counterprotesters in
yellow shirts symbolizing their loyalty to
the king. Some had the matching buzz
cuts often worn by members of the secu-
rity forces, suggesting that their defense
of the Thai crown was an official duty
rather than a personal mission.Protesters raised a three-finger salute, a symbol of antigovernment defiance, during a march toward Government House in Bangkok on Wednesday.
ADAM DEAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESThe royal motorcade crawled past the protest on Wednesday. The demonstra-
tors are openly questioning the monarchy’s exalted position in the country.SOE ZEYA TUN/REUTERSRoyal Motorcade Rolls by a Sea of Discontent
Route of Thai Queen’s Limousine Offers Family a Rare Close-Up of Protests
By HANNAH BEECH
and MUKTITA SUHARTONOLONDON — The Duchess of Sussex on
Tuesday said she felt compelled to speak
out against online misinformation, nega-
tivity and hate speech out of concern for
the world that Archie, her son with
Prince Harry, would grow up in.
Asked if becoming a mother had made
her more cautious or more courageous,
Meghan said that it was the latter, and
that raising a child had made certain is-
sues feel more urgent.
“It makes you so concerned for the
world they’re going to inherit,” she said,
addressing Fortune’s Most Powerful
Women Next Gen Summit by video from
California. “And so the things that you’re
able to tolerate on your own are not the
Office declined to comment on whether
the ambassador responded.
Before Meghan married Harry in 2018,
she was a vocal critic of President
Trump. Asked at a news conference
about the royal couple’s appeal to Ameri-
cans to vote, Mr. Trump said that he was
“not a fan of hers.”
Meghan, who has been the target of
racist and sexist harassment by online
trolls and in the British tabloids, also
spoke out against the dangers of becom-
ing addicted to social media. She said she
closed down her personal accounts for
“self-preservation.”
“I don’t think people have even started
to scratch the surface on what this is do-
ing to us,” she said.on political matters. Meghan, a U.S. citi-
zen, called the election the “most impor-
tant election of our lifetime.”
The couple, who gave up their royal
duties in January and moved to Los An-
geles, did not endorse any candidates in
the video. Over the summer, Meghan
said that those who did not vote would be
“complicit” in its outcome.
Harry and Meghan’s comments
prompted a blowback in the United
States. Representative Jason Smith, Re-
publican of Missouri, sent a letter to Brit-
ain’s ambassador to the United States
saying the couple had displayed an “in-
appropriate act of domestic interfer-
ence.”
A spokeswoman for Britain’s Foreignsame, for you go every single day, ‘How
can I make this better for him, how can I
make this world better for Archie?’ ”
“At the same time,” she said, “I am cau-
tious of putting my family in a position of
risk by certain things, and so I try to be
rather very clear with what I say and to
not make it controversial, but instead to
talk about things that seem fairly
straightforward, like exercising your
right to vote.”
Her comments came several weeks af-
ter she and Harry encouraged Ameri-
cans to vote in the upcoming U.S. election
and warned against misinformation and
hate speech, a rare intervention in Amer-
ican politics by members of Britain’s
royal family, who typically stay neutralMeghan Says Archie Inspires Her Attacks on Online Evils
By JENNY GROSSROME — One priest accused of
sexually abusing an altar boy in a
prominent Vatican City seminary
and another accused of covering it up
went before the Vatican’s criminal
tribunal on Wednesday, the first trial
in the city-state over sexual abuse
said to have occurred within its
walls.
The charges date from 2007 and
2012 and center on allegations of
abuse at the St. Pius X youth semi-
nary, a residence for boys — typically
between 12 and 18 — who are think-
ing of becoming priests. Students in
the seminary often serve as altar
boys in St. Peter’s Basilica, some-
times during papal Masses.
The priest accused of abuse, the
Rev. Gabriele Martinelli, was 17 at
the time of the initial alleged assault
and was a senior altar boy at the sem-
inary. The victim was 16. In 2017, Fa-
ther Martinelli was ordained as a
priest in Como, Italy.
Father Martinelli is accused of
forcing the victim — who has been
publicly identified only by his initials
— through threats and violence to
“submit to carnal relations, acts of
sodomy, and masturbation” on a
number of occasions in Vatican City,
according to the charges read by a
court clerk on Wednesday.
The Rev. Enrico Radice, who was
the rector of the seminary at the
time, has been accused of aiding and
abetting the abuse. He lied to Vatican
investigators, telling them in 2018
that he had no knowledge of abuse at
the seminary, statements that ham-
pered the investigation, according to
the charges read by the clerk.
Both defendants were present in
court on Wednesday for the pro-
cedural hearing, which lasted just
eight minutes before the trial was ad-
journed until later this month. Nei-
ther defendant has responded pub-
licly to the accusations, and lawyers
for the defendants did not respond to
requests for comment.
Reports of the crimes first
emerged in Italian news outlets in
2017, but the two priests were not in-
dicted until 2019. The reports relied
primarily on the accounts of Kamil
Jarzembowski, the victim’s room-
mate, who said he witnessed the
abuse and who was subsequently
kicked out of the seminary. He said
he first reported the abuse to the
church authorities in 2012.
The Vatican City seminary is run
by a religious association based in
Como, a city in northern Italy. Soon
after the 2019 indictment, the diocese
of Como issued a statement saying
that the accusations against Father
Martinelli were brought to officials’
attention in 2013, but that the reli-
gious authorities tasked with investi-
gating the allegations had found
them to be groundless.
In 2017, after the reports of abuse
emerged in the Italian media, the
Vatican asked the diocese to carry
out a fresh investigation. The diocese
did not make its findings public but
sent the Vatican a report. The 2019
statement from the diocese of Como
also noted that both Father Mar-
tinelli and Father Radice had been
“limited in the exercise of the min-
istry and suspended from carrying
out pastoral activities involving mi-
nors and vulnerable adults.”
The scourge of sexual abuse has
roiled the Roman Catholic Church for
decades, and thousands of cases of
assault and subsequent cover-ups
have sprung up across the world.
While Pope Francis has pledged
“zero tolerance” for offenders, hold-
ing an unprecedented meeting with
bishops on protecting minors and is-
suing various instructions and laws,
including one to specifically hold Vat-
ican City offenders accountable, crit-
ics say that the measures don’t go far
enough.
While the Vatican is criminally
prosecuting a sexual abuse crime
that took place within the city walls
for the first time, it has criminally
prosecuted prelates accused of sexu-
al crimes elsewhere.
In 2014, the Vatican placed Arch-
bishop Jozef Wesolowski, who had
been accused of sexually abusing
boys he met on the street while serv-
ing as the Vatican’s ambassador in
the Dominican Republic, under
house arrest. Father Wesolowski
died in 2015, shortly after his trial be-
gan.
In 2018, a Vatican tribunal sen-
tenced a former Vatican diplomat to
five years in prison and a fine of
about $5,800 for possessing and dis-
tributing child pornography.
Although Father Martinelli and
Father Radice are now facing trial,
advocates for victims’ rights have ac-
cused the Vatican of acting only after
news reports had revealed the abuse
allegations.
“This is coming to trial now, but the
first accusations were made in 2012,”
said Francesco Zanardi, the presi-
dent of Italy’s first support group for
victims of sexual abuse. “It’s a farce.”Vatican Begins
Trial of Priests
In Abuse Cases
Close to Home
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO