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The bookish Thai rights lawyer who challenged the king

FILE PHOTO: Anon Nampa, one of the leaders of recent anti-government protests, gestures as he walks during a rally to demand the government to resign, to dissolve the parliament and to hold new elections under a revised constitution, near the Democracy Monument in Bangkok, Thailand, August 16, 2020. REUTERS/Jorge Silva

The deafening cheer for Anon Nampa at Thailand’s biggest demonstration in years underlined the bookish human rights lawyer’s emergence at the forefront of a youth protest movement with his taboo-breaking call for reforms to the monarchy.

“He looks quite harmless,” Rangsiman Rome, a former activist who is now an opposition member of parliament, told Reuters.

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