BANGKOK

Three students were arrested in Bangkok Thursday at the opening night of the latest “Hunger Games” movie in Thailand, local media reported.

The films, which have become closely linked with the opposition to Thailand’s military regime, feature the three-fingered salute that has become the gesture of anti-junta sentiment.

The Khaosod news website reported university student Natcha Kongudom was seized by police after flashing the sign in the lobby of a cinema.

Two other students were arrested in front of the Scala, where the management had cancelled Wednesday’s planned screening over fears of opposition activity.

The students detained at the Scala in Bangkok’s shopping district had block-bought tickets that they planned to distribute for free via Facebook, they told reporters before their arrests.

“We organized this event as movie-lovers,” Rattapon Supasopon told reporters outside the theater. “We are not only obsessed by politics.”

They were arrested as one of them took a copy of George Orwell’s “1984” from his bag. Reading the book in public has become another way for junta opponents to show their resistance.

On Wednesday, five other students were arrested and interrogated for seven hours in a military camp after they flashed the three-fingered salute as Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former general who gave up his military position after May’s coup, was delivering a speech in Khon Kaen, northeastern Thailand.

The city is a stronghold of the Red Shirt political movement, supporters of deposed Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her brother Thaksin, also a former prime minister.

The five belonged to Dao Din, a student activist group based at the city’s university. They were released without charge.

The Hunger Games movies are set in a dystopian society made up of a wealthy capital and other districts with varying levels of poverty.

www.aa.com.tr/en