Kasama Na Nagara, who works in the financial sector, reads a book along an elevated walkway during a protest in Bangkok, Thailand. Photo / AP
Kasama Na Nagara, who works in the financial sector, reads a book along an elevated walkway during a protest in Bangkok, Thailand. Photo / AP

In junta-ruled Thailand, the simple act of reading in public has become an act of resistance.
On Saturday evening in Bangkok, a week and a half after the army seized power in a coup, about a dozen people gathered in the middle of a busy, elevated walkway connecting several of the capital's most luxurious shopping malls.
As pedestrians trundled past, the protesters sat down, pulled out book titles such as George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" a dystopian novel about life in a totalitarian surveillance state and began to read.
In a country where the army has vowed to crack down on anti-coup protesters demanding elections and a return to civilian rule, in a place where you can be detained for simply holding something that says "Peace Please" in the wrong part of town, the small gathering was an act of defiance a quiet demonstration against the army's May 22 seizure of power and the repression that has accompanied it.
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