The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace.
Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide.
Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93.
Photo: AFP
Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on TVs in supermarkets and hotel lobbies, and as pop-up notices on Thai banking apps.
Tanaburdee Srimuang has kept a vigil outside the Grand Palace since confirmation of Sirikit’s death broke in the early hours of Saturday.
“I am not tired,” the 24-year-old said. “I am happy to be here for her for the last time, to be part of her send-off on this historic day.”
The former Thai queen’s body was due late yesterday afternoon to make the short trip from Chulalongkorn Hospital to the seat of the Thai royalty, where she is to lie in state for one year before cremation.
Television newscasters are wearing black, and media Web sites have turned monochrome, while citizens have been asked to dress in muted colors and curtail celebratory public events for 90 days.
About half of the people in a supermarket and on a shopping street in central Bangkok were wearing the traditional Thai mourning colors of black or white.
K-pop supergroup Blackpink went ahead with two sold-out weekend shows at Bangkok’s 50,000-seat Rajamangala National Stadium, but attendees were asked “to wear black attire as a mark of mourning.”
Hundreds of black-clad mourners also filed into the Grand Palace from yesterday morning, even before Sirikit’s remains arrived, paying tribute to ornate portraits depicting her.
“I knew today would come one day, but now it has come I am sad — very sad,” 52-year-old insurance worker Taksina Puttisan said. “Her kindness toward Thais will be in our minds forever.”
Throughout her 66-year marriage to former Thai king Bhumibol Adulyadej, Sirikit carved a dual reputation as a glittering fashionista and the nation’s caring mother figure.
Some Western media compared Sirikit favorably to former US first lady Jackie Kennedy, in rapturous coverage on the front pages of their glossy magazines.
Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul delayed his departure to Malaysia on Saturday for a summit of ASEAN leaders to sign a peace deal with Cambodia, witnessed by US President Donald Trump.
However, he still jetted out for a quick turnaround endorsement of the pact, made after cross-border clashes in July killed more than 40 people and forced about 300,000 to flee their homes.
“I send my condolences to the Great People of Thailand,” Trump said on social media, en route to Malaysia where the pact was signed yesterday afternoon.
The lengthy reign of Sirikit’s husband, from 1946 until 2016, was bookended by World War II and Trump’s first election win.
Although Bhumibol’s son inherited the throne about nine years ago, many still revere him as the nation’s most steadfast figurehead — and Sirikit as his constant companion. She retired from the public eye in recent years, her privacy sealed by strict lese-majeste laws that limit what can be reported about the royal family. Sirikit had “suffered several illnesses” while hospitalized since 2019, including a blood infection this month, the palace said in a statement.
However, in her glamorous heyday in the 1960s she mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley, while at home touring Thailand to visit villagers in rural areas.
She was referred to as the “mother of the nation” and her birthday was designated the country’s Mother’s Day.
An American scientist convicted of lying to US authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen, China, to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain. Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and restoring movement in paralyzed people. It also has potential military applications: Scientists at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting
Jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai (黎智英) has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s (DW) freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster on Thursday said Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on June 23 at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. Deutsche Welle director-general Barbara Massing praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk.” “With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in
PHILIPPINE COMMITTEE: The head of the committee that made the decision said: ‘If there is nothing to hide, there is no reason to hide, there is no reason to obstruct’ A Philippine congressional committee on Wednesday ruled that there was “probable cause” to impeach Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte after hearing allegations of unexplained wealth, misuse of state funds and threats to have the president assassinated. The unanimous decision of the 53-member committee in the Philippine House of Representatives sends the two impeachment complaints to deliberations and voting by the entire lower chamber, which has more than 300 lawmakers. The complaints centered on Duterte’s alleged illegal use and mishandling of intelligence funds from the vice president’s office, and from her time as education secretary under Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Duterte and the
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
RSS