Social scientist summoned by police following CMU academic event

Since the “13th International Conference on Thai Studies”, which was held at CMU from July 15 to 18, at least four academics have now been summoned by the police after displaying banners saying “this was not a military camp, but an academic forum”.
Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, director of CMU’s Regional Centre for Social Science and Sustainable Development, is the latest to be called upon by the police for alleged violation of a ban on political gatherings or activities. 
He will meet the police on August 23, the Transborder News online news agency reported on Tuesday.
Chayan was quoted as saying that he had not asked for permission from the military to organise the event in the first place, as it was academic-based. 
It was probably the banners that were displayed at the event that had prompted the latest call from the police, he acknowledged.
Chayan insisted, however, that no political activities had been held at the four-day conference, despite what he was being accused of, so he had no idea why he had been summoned. 
He added that he had consulted the Chiang Mai governor about the event, and that the governor had even presided over it.
Chayan pointed out that organising academic forums in the future would become harder because people would feel threatened, despite the fact that the July academic event was open for discussions on problems the country faced, and potential solutions to them, as well as on policies that needed to be addressed. 
Some of the discussions had touched upon trans-border problems and other development issues that the government was also concerned about, he explained, adding that these issues would not be thoroughly analysed and tackled without such an “academic lens” being present. 
The event should therefore be seen as beneficial to the country, and not the opposite, he suggested.