Grief after Thai king’s death spills into anger
BANGKOK — A Thai woman accused of insulting the country’s late king was forced to kneel before his portrait at a police station on the tourist island of Samui as several hundred people bayed for an apology.
The woman’s arrest and public shaming on Sunday was the latest of several such incidents since King Bhumibol Adulyadej died last week after a reign of 70 years, plunging Thailand into intense mourning.
Two police officers led 43-year-old Umaporn Sarasat to a picture of Bhumibol in front of Bophut police station, where she knelt and prayed, both on the way into the station and the way out.
The crowd, some of whom held aloft portraits of the revered monarch, jeered when she first appeared. A line of police officers linked arms to keep them from surging forward.