Students have filed a lawsuit against Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University in an attempt to halt a major commercial development that threatens one of the area’s last surviving heritage sites.

The case challenges the 43- and 50-storey “Block 33” towers, run by the university’s property management office. It alleges that the project could violate Thai construction law because it is being built in narrow streets. 

Activists have long opposed the development, particularly because it would involve the removal of the hereditary caretaker of the 150-year-old Mazu Shrine, which sits within the construction zone.

Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal, a Chula graduate and currently a fellow at Harvard Divinity School, told Times Higher Education that the widow caretaker, Penprapa, was not merely a resident but part of the shrine itself.

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“Culture is not just a dead thing but a living thing,” he said. “The caretaker is a living history.”

He said her family had discovered the shrine generations ago and has maintained its rituals for more than a century, and her presence was essential to ensure the shrine’s upkeep.

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The Chinese shrine, Chotiphatphaisal said, “already existed in this area more than 150 years before the university existed”, making it one of the last surviving markers of the district’s historical communities and represents a rare surviving link to the area’s diasporic past.

Despite abandoning earlier plans to demolish the shrine, the university still intends to evict Penprapa, who has lived there for more than three decades, citing “security reasons”.

Chotiphatphaisal said students see the caretaker’s removal as part of a pattern.

The Block 33 towers, they argue, echo years of redevelopment that have displaced families and erased community life around the campus.

For Chotiphatphaisal, the commercial forces driving the project are in direct conflict with the university’s stated commitments to heritage and sustainability.

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He described the surrounding streets as dangerously narrow for a project of this scale: “The road at the project is very small. It will not be safe for the thousands of people who will live there.”

He said residents had only learned the extent of the legal issues once the development was “more than 60 per cent finished”.

Student groups recently held protests in support of the caretaker, with flowers brought to the shrine by five organisations.

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But speaking out is risky. “We don’t have much academic freedom in the university,” Chotiphatphaisal said, citing censorship, surveillance and the fear of budget cuts or lost opportunities. “Students have been living like this for many years.”

Still, he said that awareness about the development had grown dramatically. When he first visited the shrine, “more than 99 per cent of students didn’t know about it at all”. Now, “more than 90 per cent know about the case”, with many visiting regularly.

For him, the shrine is now symbolic of something larger. “Only the shrine and the caretaker represent the spirit of the communities,” he said.

“We want the spirit of higher education, that emphasises sustainability and justice, to come back again.”

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Chulalongkorn University did not respond to requests for comment.

tash.mosheim@timeshighereducation.com