Asia Pacific Daily Dan Wei
According to reports, on Friday local time, the Thai Royal Palace Office issued an announcement in the early morning of the 25th that Queen Mother Sirikit Kitiakara of Thailand passed away on the evening of the 24th at the age of 93.
According to the announcement, the Queen of Thailand continued to be hospitalized since September 2019. Since September 17, this month, she has been severely ill from blood infection, and despite the full efforts of the medical team, her condition has continued to worsen, and she died on the evening of September 24. The King of Thailand, Mahatma Waqira Laron, has ordered the Royal Palace Office to hold a national funeral for the Queen of Thailand and ordered members of the Royal Family and officials of the Royal Palace to mourn for a year from the date of her death.
It is understood that Sirikit is the queen of Thailand's former king bhumibol adulyadej (who died in October 2016) and the mother of the current king maha vajiralongkorn. She was born in 1932, married Bhumibol in 1950, and was awarded the title of Queen Mother in 2019.
It is reported that Queen Mother Sirikit is very loved in Thailand. Every year, on Mother's Day, August 12, her portraits are displayed in homes, offices and public spaces across Thailand. She has made achievements in areas such as helping refugees and environmental protection.
However, in the political turmoil of the last few decades in Thailand, as the role of monarchy in society is increasingly censored, the role of the queen in it is also increasingly concerned. In the turmoil marked by two military seizures and several rounds of bloody street protests, the story of the queen's influence behind the scenes has spread widely. When she publicly attended the funeral of a protestor who died in a conflict with the police, for many, this marks her standing aside in political divisions.
Poe Ridge was born in a wealthy noble family in Bangkok on August 12, 1932, when the monarchy was replaced by the constitutional system. Her parents had relatives with the early kings of the current Chakri dynasty. She went to school in Bangkok during the war, Bangkok was the target of Allied air strikes, and after the Second World War, she moved to France with her diplomatic father as an ambassador.
At the age of 16, she met Thailand's newly crowned king in Paris, where she was learning music and language. Their friendship flourished after Bhumibol was involved in a near-fatal car accident and she moved to Switzerland, where he was attending school. Later, the king courted her with poetry and composed a waltz called "I Dream of You". They married in 1950 and swore at a coronation ceremony later that year to "rule with justice for the benefit and happiness of the people of Siam (Thailand)." They have four children: the current king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, and princesses Ubolratana, Sirindhorn and Chulabhorn.
In their early marriage, the Thai royal family traveled the world as a goodwill ambassador and established personal relationships with world leaders. But by the early 1970s, the king and queen had devoted most of their energy to Thailand's domestic issues, including poverty, drug problems among mountain tribes and domestic insurgency.
An impeccable dresser and avid shopper, the Queen also enjoys climbing mountains to the countryside, where older women call her "daughter." Within Thailand, thousands of people have sought her help, with the Queen and her aides personally handling many issues ranging from marital disputes to serious illnesses. Although some people in Bangkok talk about her involvement in court plots and extravagant lifestyle, her popularity in the countryside still exists.
In 1979, she said in an interview with the Associated Press: “There has been a misunderstanding between people in the countryside and the rich in Bangkok, the so-called civilized people.The rural people in Thailand say they are ignored, and we try to fill this gap by living with them in remote areas.”
Royal development projects were established throughout Thailand, some of which were initiated and directly supervised by the Queen. In order to increase the income of poor rural families and protect dying crafts, the Queen established the "Support" Foundation in 1976, which trained thousands of villagers in silk weaving, jewelry making, painting, ceramics and other traditional crafts.
She is sometimes called the "Green Queen" for establishing wildlife breeding centers,"open zoos" and hatcheries to save endangered sea turtles. Her "Forest Loves Water" and "Cabins in the Forest" projects aim to demonstrate the economic benefits of protecting forest cover and water sources.
While the royal family elsewhere only plays a ceremonial or symbolic role, Queen Ligi believes that monarchy is an important institution in Thailand. In a 1979 interview, she said: “Some people in the university think that monarchy is outdated. But I think Thailand needs a well-understood monarch. As soon as the call ‘King Comes’ is heard, thousands of people gather together. The word king itself has magical power.”
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