Don't worry, be happy: Dancers get their make-up done backstage before a show at the Victory Monument during a military event in Bangkok on June 4. The military has staged a variety of events to “return happiness to Thai people.”
Finding I George Orwell in Bangkok The dystopian masterpiece “Nineteen EightyFour” makes a surprise appearance amid the plush shopping malls of the Thai capital By EMMA LARKIN / BANGKOK 32
TheIrrawaddy
t is Saturday afternoon and I am wandering the polished hallways of Paragon, one of Bangkok’s most luxurious shopping malls, searching for signs of protest. When a frenetic series of camera flashes light up the atrium windows, I hurry down to the plaza in front of the mall toward a fast-growing throng of journalists, photographers and policemen. The crowd is so thick that the only way to find out what is happening is to squeeze my way through to the center. There, I find the source of all this commotion: a solitary protester. He sits alone amid the hubbub, solemnly holding aloft a copy of George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” In the immediate wake of the military coup in Thailand, which took place on May 22, hundreds of people came out to demonstrate against the overthrow of a democratically elected government. But the country’s September 2014