About 500 students from multiple schools in Bangkok gathered outside the Education Ministry on Wednesday to call for the education minister and the prime minister to step down.

"Nobody is happy under dictatorship," one student said from the stage outside the ministry.

The young protesters in student uniforms, many wearing white ribbons, urged Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and Education Minister Nataphol Teepsuwan to step down and called for reform in schools.

 

Students stood up to sing the national anthem while showing the three-fingered salute that has become the signature gesture for all anti-government rallies. In a symbolic gesture for reform, students tied white ribbons to the gate of the ministry.

At the end of the national anthem, the students blew whistles. They continued to blow their whistles and shouted "Get out. Get Out" when the minister arrived to address them.



Mr Nataphol is a former key leader of the People's Democratic Reform Committee, a group notorious for blowing whistles during the street protests that led to the coup against the democratically elected government in 2014.

The rallies against the government, and in support of a new charter, began in July before spreading to universities and then schools.