Kritaya Archavanitkul Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Photo by S. Beth Atkin

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Background

Dr. Kritaya, welcome to Berkeley. How does a demographer become a human rights activist?

I have been an activist since I was a student at the university. I was one of what the Thai people call "the October people," because if you know about Thailand's contemporary history, we had a student uprising in 1974. I joined that demonstration. And then in 1992 there was the massacre in Thailand, in Bangkok. And I ran the hot-line center for helping the victims in the incident. And I think that the political incident pushed me to become a human rights activist.

Is there a conflict between your work as a social scientist, where your calling says you should be detached and analytic, and your work as an activist which requires that you be engaged, be committed to act and have a lot of passion? How do you deal with that conflict?

I don't think there's a conflict between being a research academic and being a human rights activist. In fact, each role is a part of the other. The ultimate goal for all researchers is to find the truth of the research issue that we are studying. A human rights activist also wants to help people and in order to do so, you have to gain the truth from the incident and prove to the public, to the parties involved, these are the rights of these people -- particularly those in disadvantaged groups. So, to me, there is no conflict at all. But I have to emphasize here that the work that I have done so far I would not have been able to do alone. I have very good support from the Institute, from the university, so that I feel that I have to thank all of the staff at the university too.

In looking at your work, which we'll talk about in a minute, I get the sense that public education is very important. After you find the truth and know it, it's important to communicate that information to appropriate audiences. Tell us a little about that work, the work of public education when you're on the cutting edge in human rights work.

I think there are three main parties involved here. One, we have to work through the network of nongovernmental organizations. Another is that we have to work through governmental departments. And the last, but not least, it is very important to work through the media, the mass media. So we have to have a strong connection between these three. As a researcher, I think I can talk with them without much problem. To the NGO groups, to the network group, we talk with them about the rights they have and we help them in terms of translating their ideas and goals to the government. To the government agencies, we show them the findings that we work out with the NGOs. What they need, I think, is a system of information. They need something that can be relied on. And through the research work and through the fact-finding work, we can provide the government with information like this. But we are working with the mass media. I think there is nowhere to bring these issues up to the public so working through the mass media is also very important. Because I also have a background in journalism, I work quite well with the mass media, with the people in that circle. So we have to work through these three components.

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