Professor Chaiwat Satha-Anand, a well-known peace advocate and founder of the Thai Peace Information Centre (TPIC), died today from cancer. He was 69.
A ceremony for those who wish to pay their respects to Chaiwat will commence at 5pm today at the Maroon Mosque in Bang Rak district of Bangkok. His funeral will start at 8am tomorrow.
Chaiwat graduated with a Bachelor’s degree (first class honours) in politics and government from Thammasat University and earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Hawaii.
Chaiwat, known as a non-violence and peacebuilding expert, was a professor of political science at Thammasat University and the director of the TPIC he founded, which conducts studies and activism related to the Thai military and social issues.
He was the chairperson of the Strategic Non-violence Commission in Thailand and an expert on nonviolence theory and activism, and on Islam.
For several years, he directed the International Peace Research Association’s (IPRA) Commission on Nonviolence and served on the Scientific Committee of the International University for Peoples’ Initiative for Peace (IUPIP) in Rovereto, Italy.
He was the 2012 winner of the El-Hibri Peace Education Prize. In 2003, he was nominated to lead efforts to reduce violence in southern Thailand, as a member of the National Reconciliation Commission, and was the key author of its final report to the Thai government.
He published numerous articles and books at home and abroad on the military, alternative defence, religion and peace, Islam and nonviolence and modern political philosophy. Some of his works have been translated into Bahasa Indonesia, Italian, Arabic, Japanese and Korean.
His publications include “The Promise of Reconciliation: Examining Violent and Nonviolent Effects on Asian Conflicts,” and “Non-killing Security and the State.”
