The king has an estate on Lake Starnberg, near Munich.
In March, when the pandemic began, for logistical reasons, he decided to move
with his entourage to a hotel. The Grand Hotel Sonnenbichi in the resort town
of Garmisch-Partenkirchen was closed for all other guests, but couldn’t say no
to the King of Thailand. This hotel has a great view of the Bavarian Alps. The
fourth floor is reserved for the king and his harem of twenty sex soldiers. The
harem is ostensibly assembled as a military unit. But their objective is to
please rather than protect the king.
According to the German authorities, the king and his
harem were given special permission because they are “a single, homogenous
group of people with no fluctuation.”
*****
King Rama X, now 68, has been married four times, and
has seven children. He always needs a young wife irrespective of his age. He
divorced his third wife and sent her relatives to jail. Then in May 2019 he
married again. His wife was a former flight attendant. In two months time,
though, he declared a girlfriend as his concubine. The king awarded her the
title of a “Royal Noble Consort”. However, in three months, when she started to
behave like an official queen, her title and ranks were removed and she was
sent to prison.
*****
While King Rama X lived at the Munich hotel with his
harem, his official wife lived at his house in Switzerland.
Since the lockdown, Thai Airways has banned all
international flights except to Munich and Zurich. On April 5, the king took off in his plane. He picked up his wife from Switzerland and landed in Bangkok
to celebrate an annual event. Every year, Thailand celebrates the coronation of
Rama I and the establishment of the Chakri dynasty, of which the current king
is tenth in line. As a king, he had convinced the German government quarantine
was not necessary for him. And he has diplomatic immunity. At the Bangkok party
he said, “This pandemic is not the fault of anybody. The government must solve
the problem by understanding its causes.” Saying this, he immediately went back
to the plane, and flew back to Germany. He sent his wife back to Switzerland.
Between March and today, that was the only day he spent in Thailand.
This week, on 2 September, possibly bored with the
harem, the king ordered the release of the Noble Consort (concubine), and
brought her to the hotel in Germany.
*****
King Rama X is protected by the strictest Lese-Majeste laws. The criminal code
says anyone defaming, insulting or threatening the king will be punished with
imprisonment of three to fifteen years.
Nationwide protests are happening in Thailand for the
last two months. They are against the government, but the king is not spared. #WhyDoWeNeedAKing has been a trending twitter topic. When life outside prisons is as rotten, and
life is as miserable as death, protestors have nothing to lose. The King of a
mismanaged country with a collapsed economy lives abroad with a harem viewing
the Bavarian Alps.
Will political protests in pandemic times succeed in removing
dictators or kings? Let’s wait and see.
Ravi
फारच शोचनीय अवस्था आहे
ReplyDeleteThe egos and blindness of some royalty is beyond reason
ReplyDelete