
RANGSIT, Thailand -- A third-year undergraduate student strolls through the leafy campus of a prestigious Thai university with a group of friends, all of them co-eds in their early 20s. But it is far from a typical scene of student life -- they are her "security guards," each armed with mobile phones to witness, record and share online the moment agents of Thailand's pro-military government swoop to arrest her.
Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul is not taking chances with her safety at Thammasat University's branch in Rangsit, a city on the northern fringe of Bangkok, where she is majoring in social research. The 21-year-old picks secure venues for meetings, preferring quieter corners. And she has just moved from living in an off-campus building -- where policemen have been spotted monitoring the movement of residents -- into a student dormitory within the university.