By Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal –

I remember seeing people faint on the ground, and even monks crying loudly. This happened at a military service recruitment center in Thailand. You can find many such videos on YouTube.

I was born and raised in Thailand, a country where around 90 to 95 percent of the population identifies as Buddhist. Thailand takes pride in its image as the “Land of Smiles,” a place that presents itself as peaceful and hospitable. In school, every morning we saluted the flag, sang the national anthem, prayed and chanted, and meditated before going to class. We were often taught to dedicate merit to others, in line with the Buddhist tradition of compassion and brahmavihāra. I grew up in this kind of environment, as many Thai students have for a very long time.

Yet alongside this moral world, there was another side of Thai society.

Our history textbooks and teachers remained obsessed with the Burmese, repeatedly recalling how they invaded and burned Ayutthaya, the former capital. There is some truth in that history, but it continues to shape attitudes in the present. Today, Myanmar is a country devastated by war, and many people have fled to Thailand. Yet many Thais still believe these refugees do not deserve the right to stay, that they should not have access to healthcare, and that their children should not have the same right to free education as Thai citizens. This mindset that supports the hostility towards neighboring countries helps justify and sustain one of the most controversial sources of unnecessary suffering in Thai society: military conscription.

In Thailand, young men at the age of twenty-one must report for conscription and draw a ballot. A red card means military service; a black card means exemption. Even monks are not fully outside this system.

In a country marked by repeated military coups, the army has often served domestic domination more than national defense. Though the attitude made people anxious about shared bordering countries. Yet. Today, Thailand does not face the kind of constant warfare that would make such a system seem unavoidable. Many conscripts end up being used as servants rather than soldiers. Training is often ineffective. Some recruits have reported abuse, and some have died under suspicious circumstances.

In theory, if you are born male in Thailand, you must confront the possibility of becoming a soldier. But in practice, many middle-class people can escape this fate through money, privilege, or connections. This was very normal when I was around nineteen and had to report so that my name would be listed for future conscription. A military recruiter told my father that if I paid him around 50,000 baht, he could help me or guide me on how not to be charged. This was a normal conversation, though of course it was not said too explicitly.

Even before that, when I was fifteen years old, I already struggled with whether I should join the reserve army training program. Most boys in my classroom, perhaps around 90 percent, ended up doing this. If you joined, you had to train once a week for three continuous years, and then you did not need to do military service. I felt a lot of pressure. Not joining also meant, in the eyes of many people, that you were not masculine enough.

But even then, I already felt that we were being turned into cogs in a machine, allowing the system to run unquestioned. I did not want to be complicit. Conscription in this way is never only about the individual. It is about a whole society accepting that some people may be sacrificed especially for poor young men so that others can remain comfortable.

Military service is often defended as protection of the nation. But when participation is compulsory and refusal is not truly allowed, it normalizes something darker: violence. Armies are trained for violence. When the time comes, the soldier is expected to obey the command to kill, to torture, to interrogate the target without question. Conscription offers no real space to imagine other solutions. In this way, it teaches citizens preparing to be violent is normal, necessary, and patriotic.

But this stands in direct contradiction to the Buddhism so many of us were taught.

The Buddha did not praise violence, domination, or hatred. He taught that the true warrior is one who conquers greed, hatred, and delusion within himself. In the suttas, there are also strong warnings about the karmic consequences of being a soldier.

How can a society claim to be Buddhist while forcing its young men into an institution built on the preparation for harm? How can we recite verses of loving-kindness for all beings in every direction, and at the same time accept a system that trains us to injure and kill those same beings?

Some will say this is naive. They will argue that the world is dangerous, that conflict is inevitable, and that every nation must be ready to fight. But this confuses what is with what ought to be. Even if conflict exists, does it follow that we must preserve it forever as the foundation of our politics? Does conflict mean that the only possible solution is violence?

Yes, Thailand now has tensions with Cambodia. And Cambodia is going to pass the draft act soon. But these tensions are often inflamed by political actors who benefit from fear and nationalism. Must we remain trapped in this cycle indefinitely?

Religion asks us to do something difficult, that is, to make real what the world dismisses as impossible. It asks us to uncover a deeper truth hidden behind convention, habit, and fear. To be Buddhist is not simply to repeat rituals, identify with a national religion, or receive the comfort of what Bonhoeffer calls “cheap grace”, a grace without moral cost, without transformation, without the courage to confront suffering. To be Buddhist is to struggle against greed, hatred, and delusion, even when they are embedded in the institutions of society itself.

Military conscription keeps us inside the old habits of domination, obedience, and violence. Conscientious objection, by contrast, opens the possibility of another path.

To refuse military service is not cowardice. In a truly Buddhist sense, it may be an act of courage. It is a refusal to let the state define killing as duty. It is a refusal to surrender compassion to nationalism. It is a refusal to accept that violence is the natural order of the world. It means adhering to the core of the Buddha’s teachings.

That is why I became Thailand’s first conscientious objector, I refuse to yield to the system of violence. The Another World Is Possible and We can live by it now. Although I might be sentenced to jail, so be it.

If Buddhism means anything today in Thailand and, of course, the world, it must mean the courage to say no to military service. It is what every Buddhist should do now.

*Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal is a Buddhist Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, Thailand’s first conscientious objector, and the founder of Sam Yan Press, an independent and activist publishing house in Bangkok.