Rallying Point
Despite the self-justifying intent of the Phibun regime in erecting a monument to its own seizure of power and calling it a monument to democracy, Democracy Monument's rather dubious origins are now largely forgotten, and it has served as a rallying point for later generations of democracy activists. It was the focus of the mass student demonstrations against a later military regime in 1973, and of the protests that triggered the 1976 military coup. In 1992 scores of Thais were killed as they protested at the Monument against General Suchinda Kraprayoon's regime. These events have given the Monument a legitimacy it lacked for much of its history.
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Famous quotes containing the word point:
“But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)