The King is not amused: ban in thailand boosts

Oct. 30--NEW HAVEN -- The king of Thailand may be the world's longest serving monarch and possibly the most adored. But not everyone thinks King Bhumibol Adulyadej deserves the royal treatment.

An American journalist has taken a critical look at how a king who portrays himself as above politics has shrewdly wielded his power over the past 60 years, undermining the democratic process. This past spring, a delegation of Thai officials met with the president of Yale University in New Haven to try to stop the publication of "The King Never Smiles." The trip was a bust: the book went to print and Thailand quickly banned it. But this academic biography has piqued enough curiosity that Yale recently printed a third edition.

"We thought it was a fairly small market, a very specialized book, but ironically the controversy has given the book a lot of publicity," said John Donatich, director of Yale University Press.

In the world of forbidden reading, "The King Never Smiles" has neither the profanity of "The Catcher in the Rye" or the eroticism of "Tropic of Cancer." Its biggest sin? Portraying the king as human.

While royals elsewhere dodge paparazzi and tabloid reporters, Bhumibol rarely has to worry about unflattering coverage. Lèse-majeste laws make it a crime to disparage the king, which explains why the image Bhumibol has crafted for himself -- as a living Buddha, sacred and infallible -- has gone unchecked for so long, Paul Handley argues.

Bhumibol was just 18 years old when, in 1946, he unexpectedly became king. His uncle had abdicated the throne and Bhumibol's older brother, next in line for the job, died mysteriously of a gunshot to the head. The throne he inherited was nearly powerless, weakened by the constitution Thailand had adopted earlier.

American-born and educated in Switzerland, Bhumibol was an unlikely leader for a tropical nation of peasant farmers. But over time he restored the throne's prestige and gained the love of his people by funding thousands of rural development projects. In his free time, he pursued sailing, oil painting and the jazz saxophone. His brilliance, as praised in the popular press, would make even Kim Jong Il blush.

During his reign, communism, then capitalism, has threatened Thailand's stability. In 1997, the country's booming economy crashed and its currency became nearly worthless. As millions of people fell into poverty, two competing groups -- the royal and business elites -- came together in an uneasy alliance, said Kevin Hewison, a Thai scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

As the economy recovered, the alliance crumbled. Last month, the palace asserted its power in a military coup that overthrew Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a telecommunications mogul. The prime minister had been accused of corruption, election fraud and mishandling a separatist uprising. But rather than allowing people to vote him out of office, the military rolled in, replacing an elected government with a military dictatorship. The king did not sanction the coup, the military insists. Yet soldiers tied yellow ribbons -- the king's color -- to their guns in a show of loyalty.

While living in Thailand and writing for the Far Eastern Economic Review, Handley became fascinated at how few historians had looked at the king critically. "No one had written a modern political history with the palace as a political actor," he said. He wrote the book knowing it would be banned and that he would probably never feel safe returning to the country again.

The blur of military coups described in the book show how a king who professes to support democracy has not always acted that way. In 1976, Bhumibol backed a bloody right-wing coup. In a later coup, in 1992, he waited three days before stopping the military from firing on demonstrators.

As the book headed for the presses in May, Yale President Richard Levin met with several Thai officials in his office, including the Cabinet secretary general and the president of the Yale Club of Thailand. Thai officials also met with Donatich at Yale University Press. In the end, the publisher stood firm but delayed shipping by six weeks, until after the king's jubilee celebration in July.

The book joins William Stevenson's 1999 biography "The Revolutionary King" on Thailand's shelf of unapproved reading. Though favorable to the king, the palace took offense at Stevenson's mistakes and his use of the king's nickname, "Lek," or little brother, throughout.

The big question facing Thailand now is who will succeed the popular king. Nearly 79 years old, Bhumibol is frail and in poor health. His only son is despised, said Handley, noting that Thai restaurants in America often hang portraits of the king and queen on their walls but seldom the prince.

Thak Chaloemtiarana, a Thai citizen who heads the Asian Studies department at Cornell University, dismissed Handley's book as mostly gossip. "He's not saying anything new that a Thai hasn't heard before," he said.

Others praise the book for going where few have dared. The Economist excused its impersonal tone by noting that Handley had no access to either the king or his official papers.

Aside from a few copies of the book smuggled into Thailand, the average citizen has not read it. Even if it were available, though, it's unclear how many readers, fed on years of propaganda, would come to see their king differently. "Most people would see this as a pack of lies," said UNC's Hewison. "It's clearly not. It's a very carefully researched book."

Contact Kim Martineau at kmartineau@courant.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Hartford Courant, Conn.

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