King Maha Vajiralongkorn of Thailand made a rare public appearance on Friday, 7 October, at the nursery school targeted in a mass shooting.
His Majesty and Prime Minister Pray Chan-o-cha arrived at the school, which is located in the village of Uthai Sawan, Nong Bua Lamphu province in the northeast of the country. They were seen talking to family members of the victims and people injured during the attack, some of whom had already been discharged from the hospital.
The Prime Minister then went on to visit the hospital where the other injured victims are still being treated and the three temples where the victims’ bodies are currently being laid out for relatives and loved ones to gather and pray.
On Thursday, 6 October, a former police officer entered the nursery school his son used to attend, and when the school personnel tried to lock the gates, he started shooting indiscriminately. He then entered the room where the youngest were taking a nap and stabbed most of them to death.
The perpetrator then returned to his own home, where he murdered his wife and son, who had not been at school for a month prior to the incident, before taking his own life.
The attack left 37 people dead, including the attacker, of which 24 were children. The perpetrator was a former police officer who had been let go in June due to being discovered making use of drugs and other illegal substances. However, in a preliminary result, the medical examiners didn’t find any drugs in his system.
King Rama X has been living pretty much a secluded life in Germany for many years. In 2020, protests against the closure of the Future Forward Party, whose programme was centred around limiting the military influence on national politics and the restrictions of movement aimed at reducing the spread of COVID-19. Additionally, the protests spread to demand radical reform of the monarchy, cutting many of the King’s privileges and demanding the end of the ties between the armed forces and the monarchy, which was seen as damaging to the constitution.
This makes his appearance even more significant, considering that the King did not make such visits for similar tragedies in the past, like the killing of two armed forces members by a colleague last month or the killing of 29 people by a soldier in 2020.
