Nation in mourning: Police lining up in front of the Grand Palace for the arrival of the royal motorcade transporting the body of Sirikit in Bangkok. — AFP/AP
Thousands of grieving Thai royalists lined the streets of Bangkok, saluting a procession bringing former queen Sirikit’s body to lie in state for a year-long funeral at the capital’s Grand Palace.
Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide.
Former queen Sirikit, the mother of the current King Vajiralongkorn and wife of the longest-reigning monarch, died on Friday at the age of 93.
Sirikit’s body was carried in a slow-moving ambulance from Chulalongkorn Hospital late on Sunday afternoon, flanked by motorbike outriders on a 10km procession to the Grand Palace.
Crowds of nurses clasped their hands and bowed as the convoy passed, while other spectators clutched portraits of the queen or wept as ranks of saluting police officers fell to one knee.
The former queen’s body will lie in state at the seat of the Thai royalty for one year before cremation.
Black and white tributes to the royal matriarch were beamed onto towering billboards, on TVs in supermarkets and hotel lobbies and as pop-up notices on Thai banking apps.
Mourners gathering outside the Grand Palace. — AFP/AP
Television newscasters wore black and media websites turned monochrome, while citizens have been asked to dress in muted colours and curtail celebratory public events for 90 days.
About half of the people in a supermarket and on a shopping street in central Bangkok were seen wearing the traditional Thai mourning colours of black or white.
K-pop supergroup Blackpink went ahead with sold-out weekend shows at Bangkok’s 50,000-seat Rajamangala National Stadium, but attendees were asked “to wear black attire as a mark of mourning”.
Throughout her 66-year marriage to king Bhumibol Adulyadej, who reigned from 1946 to 2016, Sirikit carved a reputation as a glamorous fashionista and the nation’s caring mother figure.
In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, she mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley.
At home, she was referred to as the “Mother of the Nation” and her birthday was designated the country’s Mother’s Day. — AFP
