Although military dictator Thanom Kittikachorn ruled Thailand from 1963 to 1973, Thailand briefly became a constitutional state in 1968. Still, Kittikachorn appointed himself prime minister after elections in 1969, and then, in 1971, revoked the constitution with a staged inside putsch in 1971, supposedly to purge com- munist infiltration. Protests now swept campuses, particularly at Thammasat University in Bangkok, where student organizations demonstratively set a black wreath at the monument to democra- cy. This event laid the symbolic foundation stone of the student protest movement.