Thailand’s Parliament and the Architecture of Selective Peace

As of October 21, 2025, Thailand’s House of Representatives has taken a step that exposes the limits of its own reconciliation project. During the first reading deliberation of the Promotion of a Peaceful Society Bill, lawmakers voted by 184 to uphold Section 3, a clause that explicitly excludes individuals accused of political offenses or acts of expression driven by political conflict between January 1, 2005 and July 16, 2025. The exclusion means that those charged under the country’s Criminal Code Section 112, the royal defamation provision, and many young protesters who emerged from Thailand’s turbulent protest decade will remain outside the reach of legal forgiveness.

The bill, reviewed by an ad hoc committee chaired by veteran politician Nattawut Saikua, was introduced to signal national healing after years of political confrontation. Yet when the House began debating Section 3, the chamber revealed how fragile that notion of peace still is. Bhumjaithai Party MP Natchanon Srikorkua questioned why the section diverged from the principles laid out by Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, whose version had omitted any reference to age or political motive. He warned that the revised text risked contradicting the draft’s own principle of unity. People’s Party MP Sasinan Thammanithinant pressed further, urging the chamber to recognise minors under 18 who were swept into political protests, arguing that a peaceful society cannot emerge from punishing its own children.

Government whip Chada Thaised responded that leniency for minors was already addressed in Section 9/1, which allows a public prosecutor to petition the court for a non judgment cessation under Thailand’s Juvenile and Family Courts Act. He supported clemency for children but insisted it must proceed through formal process, not sentiment. That procedural insistence was enough to fracture the chamber. After a tense hour long recess called to reconcile differences, the government majority reaffirmed Section 3 as written, keeping Section 112 and all politically motivated offenses outside the amnesty’s boundary.

The outcome was procedural but it carried moral weight. In that single vote, Parliament drew a visible line between the state’s power to forgive and its fear of losing control over truth. Supporters said the exclusion respected existing laws protecting the monarchy. Critics saw a contradiction, a law that promises reconciliation while refusing to forgive the very acts that defined the last generation’s demand for reform. Official records show that since 2020, more than 280 people have faced charges under Section 112, including at least two dozen minors. For them, the vote was not about abstract legality but about whether they would ever be allowed to return to ordinary life.

What emerges from this debate is the architecture of selective peace. Thailand seeks reconciliation through legal precision instead of moral courage, a peace engineered to look orderly rather than to feel just. The political establishment’s caution is understandable; rapid amnesty risks reopening the country’s ideological fault lines. Yet reconciliation cannot exist where mercy is conditional on obedience. When forgiveness is filtered through hierarchy, peace becomes performance.

The government will likely defend this bill as balanced, an attempt to maintain stability while protecting national institutions. But history records that Thailand’s previous amnesty attempts, including the 2013 blanket proposal that collapsed under royalist backlash, have failed for the same reason, the refusal to include speech and conscience within the circle of redemption. This new bill repeats that pattern, only with younger faces now carrying the stigma.

If Thailand truly seeks a peaceful society, it must learn that law alone cannot deliver it. Peace requires acknowledgment of harm, not just the management of dissent. The youth who spoke, marched, or made mistakes under pressure were not enemies of the state but reflections of its growing pains. To keep them criminalised is to freeze the nation inside its own past.

The Promotion of a Peaceful Society Bill will return for further readings before proceeding to the Senate and Royal assent. Whether the coming debates soften or entrench its exclusions will decide whether this legislation becomes a bridge toward renewal or a monument to fear. Reconciliation, like democracy itself, cannot be written in sections; it must be lived in truth.

Midnight