Thailand

Thailand - where to position the country and what is its future?

The issue how to evaluate Thailand's present situation and where to generally position the country has become an ongoing topic in the (European) media after the latest events in Thailand.
There are voices like "Thailand has been our (villain or) good ally for decades and a bastion during the Cold War". That is why do not be upset and interfere in any way. Other voices classify the country "having been a faked democracy and nothing else than a dictatorship of the elites in cooperation with the army". Very important is the question about the future and solutions to the problems. As follows you can find an article published in The Guardian identifying a problem of leadership in Thailand asking for a credible leader as a first step. Although I am not a Thai citizen I feel free to start this thread. :-)

"Thailand: country needs a credible (political) leader
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/thailand-violence-ends-reconciliation-leadership

After a week of violence that left Bangkok's commercial heart smouldering in ruins alongside Thailand's land of smiles reputation, there are few winners and even less certainty about where the country goes from here than when the whole mess began.

The coalition government looks stable for now but a lasting solution to the fissures in Thai society and loss of faith in the political process looks further away than ever.

The tough final military action to clear the anti-government protest site helped prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva salvage his credentials with his supporters. The redshirts themselves, or at least the thugs, vandals and arsonists among them who set Bangkok ablaze, also bolstered his position. Many in the capital who had been partially sympathetic to the red cause were shocked by the apocalyptic turn of the endgame.

Abhisit is talking reconciliation and rebuilding. But with 82 dead and nearly 1,800 injured and redshirts, still defiant and angry, returning to heroes' welcomes across the north and north-east, it is hard to see how the process begins – particularly when Abhisit, loathed by a majority of the electorate, is unable to show his face in many parts of the country.

Not that his nemesis Thaksin Shinawatra, widely assumed to have bankrolled the two-month protest, is any more of a unifying figure. The anarchy of the past days has driven many previously non-committed Thais firmly into the anti-Thaksin camp. Nationwide he still commands loyalty, but his return to politics would simply lead to new yellowshirt protests.

The seemingly obvious way to hit the reset button would be to call new elections and Abhisit has hinted at that, saying he will return to the five-point road map that was to have delivered a fresh poll by 14 November. But no sooner had he made the promise than his finance minister Korn Chatikavanij raised doubts about the date, saying he feared violence in any campaign. Coalition partner Banharn Silpa-archa has raised similar concerns.

In any case, it is far from clear that a new vote would change very much – or even if the redshirts believe in that any more. One of their chief complaints is that they keep electing governments which are either thrown out by coups or dubious legal processes.

So while a fresh election may lance the boil in Thailand for a time, there are no guarantees that such a decision in itself is a longterm answer to the country's deep problems. And as the smoke clears over the rubble in Bangkok, it is also not possible to identify any Thai political leader able to provide the necessary circuit-breaker to bring an end to the crippling cycle that has paralysed the country for so long."

Another article worth being mentioned was published in Tehran Times.
By the way sometimes I feel as if newspapers from this world area write what many Europeans might think, nowadays. It is difficult...

This is an article in the Tehran Times about the crisis in Thailand.
Source: http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=219898

" When the White House is quiet as protesters are butchered in the streets of Bangkok Thailand, suspicions are raised. Silence often equals complicacy. One can only imagine what the U.S.’s response would be to a Venezuelan government slaughter: the U.S. media and President Obama would loudly condemn such an act, in contrast to the muted response to Thailand’s blood bath.

The history of U.S.-Thailand relations explains why. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. used Thailand as one of the main “anti-communist” bulwarks in an area that included China, Vietnam, Burma, and other countries that were challenging capitalism.

Thailand was thus transformed into a U.S. client state and given money, guns, and U.S. government intelligence to battle Thailand’s “communists.” This relationship has equaled numerous Thai dictatorships that have a very bloody history, including the shooting of untold numbers of protesters that the Thai government named “communists,” or their modern equivalent, “terrorists.”

The Washington Post is a much more moderate newspaper...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/22/AR2010052203166.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Today morning I read the following article. This was one side of the morning story.

PM: Reconciliation a hard road

* Bangkok Post published: 27/05/2010 at 02:27 PM
Source: http://www.bangkokpost.com/breakingnews/179328/pm-reconciliation-is-hard

Thai prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has admitted that carrying out his five-point roadmap to national reconciliation will not be easy, because some people are still trying to instill hate in communities.

"The government has no intention to pressure or create problems for those protesters who joined the anti-government rally with no hidden agenda.

"We will try to reach this group of people to create a good understanding and to provide them with comprehensive information, since they only received one-sided information from the protest leaders for two months," Mr Abhisit said on Thursday.

However, the government had no plan to reconcile with the "terrorists" who were among the red-shirt demonstrators and legal action would be taken against them.

He said some points of this reconciliation roadmap would take more time to execute.

"We have to make sure that there are mechanisms for dealing with issues such as inequality and social injustice," he said.

"The government wants all sides to understand the overall situation and to understand each other. It will take a lot of patience and cooperation to restore the situation," he said.

The United States Senate and the European Union had voiced their support for the reconciliation plan, he said.

On convicted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's plan to seek justice from the World Court, Mr Abhisit said Thaksin planned this from the beginning, as he wanted to smear the government and hoped foreign countries or the World Court would intervene.

"Thaksin already has problems involving violating human rights," he said. "I have assigned the Justice Ministry to continue the investigation into the killing of people in drug trafficking cases when he was in office."

I read the other side following this link

Not quite up to date any more, but bringing up the arguments and points of view of both sides.

Part 1:


Part2:

luli123, can you please tell me the proper procedure on how to post a YouTube video in our posts to make them appear?

For the life of me, I can't seem to get it to work. I try to post the "embed code" from the YouTube video in the "script prompt" (after I select the YOUTUBE function above,) but nothing happens.

I would like to share a video with everyone here to further this discussion you have started on this important Thai matter.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Quite a good comment relating to social problems and the social gap you can read as follows. It does not go deep, but it hits the bull's eye:

Source: http://www.mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=623494

"Thai Politics: Mind the Gap
by Charles Frith

I`ve mentioned the social inequality gap and I believe that if ever the Kingdom is going to right itself there needs to be a grown up discussion about why there is so little ambition for the poor.

I've been coming to Thailand since I was 23 years old and have never felt happier than when the chicken is grilling on the roadside and I'm able to shoot the breeze a little with the locals. I speak reasonably good Thai and generally know when I'm the subject of conversation in Khmer or Laos though sadly the thing that impresses any of them most is my ability to chow down on the really adventurous food that takes years if not decades to get into.

In all the time I've been here there's only one person I've come across who had any appetite for talking about social inequality. I think I've had some exposure to all the classes, ethnic groups, business people both local and international and the impact of the massive tourism business not to mention the amazing cuisine, the girls, the transsexuals, minor royalty, cops, villains, army, politicians, sports and pop stars. It's never left me that the propensity for the underprivileged to be so unambitious is only matched by the propensity for the privileged to have so little ambition for the underprivileged.

And so I've left it there because generally the nasty after taste of all that can easily be translated into a myopic xenophobia for all other ethnic groups including Caucasians who are easy pickings when feelings of domestic superiority are aroused.

All that has changed.

Just because all fluffy kittens are nice doesn't mean that all things nice must be fluffy kittens. By that I mean just because a group of people have a justifiable grievance, doesn't mean I'm all for what they are all for. I don't have any time for the Thai media who never speak truth to power and simply echo the prevailing ruling elite's sentiment without question. So I'll try and paint a quick picture of Thai politics if that's at all possible.

Pretty much all politicians are on the make. We had Khun Chuan a few years back, who not unlike our John Major was a quiet and untainted modest politician. Apart from him, all of them are first class weasels who put self interest before their people and their country while all the time proclaiming love for their King, while showing very little application of that love.

There's not much to say about the King without sounding like the sycophants who invoke his name despite never having read any history whatsoever, or even ever trying to apply his sufficiency economy philosophy. Actually nobody talks about it. It's enough to say I heart New York because why would any body question that simple expression of sentiment?

Suffice to say that at the beginning of the decade or thereabouts Thaksin Shinawatra became Prime Minister and I remember my girlfriend of that time cried as his electoral success became apparent.

Groundless or melodramatic tears I thought at the time, but now I see what's going on it's somewhat clearer. Anyway, vote buying is standard political strategy. It works in the Western world over taxation and it works here. Thaksin's genius was to do it in a new way and by pumping money into the rural areas he secured the hearts and minds of these people like never before and more importantly their relatively inexpensive votes.

He then went on to amass as large a personal fortune as he could until the ruling elite could take it no longer and locked him out on a foreign visit through a military coup. We all rejoiced over that. The three thousand extra judicial killings in 2003, the vote buying, the stranglehold on the free media which at times is just as silencing as the lese majeste rules for the royal household (and allegedly the Privy Council I read only today).

And then it became apparent that our initial euphoria was misjudged because the hearts and minds (and votes) of all the more impoverished people in the Kingdom had been brushed aside like their hopes and aspirations are always brushed aside by the ruling elite and our hypocrisy was staring us in the face. The ugly truth is that the wishes of the majority are the foundation principles of democracy.

This narrative was quickly reduced to reds versus yellows or Mustard versus Ketchup as Nick memorably described it in Hong Kong. Yellow for Royalists and Reds for Thaksinomics.
This may have served as a useful mnemonic in the beginning but it was always the case that red can be yellow but yellow can never be red which may be confusing but serves as a useful reminder of deity worship versus day to day self interest. They're different things unless they're the same thing.

I feel I'm veering off into known unknowns territory so I'll attempt to wrap this up by throwing in another example of the gap that dare not speak its name. I've mentioned the social inequality gap and I believe that if ever the Kingdom is going to right itself there needs to be a grown up discussion about why there is so little ambition for the poor. Why public transport and infrastructure to the rural regions never gets a mention. Why schools that teach history and geography are evidently absent on a massive scale.

But one last example has been brought home to me time and again in advertising and the focus groups where I get to hear female office hierarchy talk openly behind one way mirrors about who to to lunch with based on where they come from. This is just one picture that the Thai advertiser likes to think portrays the average person in Thailand. And this is the colour and bone structure of the remaining 95% of the population.

Can you see why they protest? You ignore their electoral wishes. They are marginalized, put through shitty schools, given no opportunities, have a health system that only Thaksin ever tried to improve, work on the streets where even the endless broken pavements are alien to you. You look down upon them, see them as the minority when it is you who are outnumbered. You parody their simple ways in the soap operas and finally try to sell them skin whitening cream if they ever aspire to a metropolitan lifestyle.

They may be the unwashed masses and frankly many of them have tried to cut my own throat when given a chance for a few dollars but that's because they've never had the chances that you and I had. They don't have a Facebook group, they are grubby, they lost thirty five lives so far against an entire army and yet they are the soil of your country.

Mind that gap."

Well, I think it is time to also present an article and comment. It is about the style how western media report about South East Asia and Thailand especially.
The author of the article is Andre Vltchek a novelist, journalist and filmmaker who is very active in SEA and who makes impression on me. :-)

His comment and analysis are as follows:

Western Media Perverts Information about Thailand

Rebellion was crushed and Bangkok streets were covered with blood, mostly that of poor Thai peasants with their origins in the country's north or northeast. Armored vehicles crashed through the barricades made of old tires and bamboo rods, and government-employed snipers performed their terrible task, shooting people from tall buildings, often aiming directly at their heads.

The reaction of Western media was one of almost calm. "Peace was largely restored in the city Thursday, a day after a military crackdown on anti-government protesters triggered rioting in which 39 buildings were burned," reported the Associate Press (AP) just one day after the carnage. Not surprisingly, it was AP whose news appeared for days on the front page of Yahoo News, shaping public opinion in Europe and the United States as well as Southeast Asia itself.

Early on, it appeared that no one visiting the Redshirts stronghold at the Ratchaprasong area in Bangkok could ignore the pleas of protesters for social justice. While the military coup against Thaksin Shinavatra remained one of the main grievances of the rebels, the issue was gradually fading, replaced by much more urgent ones. Thaksin's images gave way to the red stars on the hats and jackets of defenders of the barricades.

In Western media reports, practically all talk about poverty and discrimination and arrogance of ruling elites quickly disappeared from dispatches of major press agencies. Expressions like "struggle for social justice" became self-censored by journalists in almost all English-language publications and wire services.

A propaganda machine went to work. Government snipers killing protesters came to be described as "clashes between protesters and government troops." The murder (by one of the snipers) of Major General Khattiya Sawasdiphol, who had earlier switched sides and joined the Redshirts, was played down, while agencies, newspapers and magazines in the United Kingdom and United States even invented a derogatory definition for this fallen soldier: rogue general. In the same breath, in one of its recent reports, AP described the country's monarch both as "revered" and "beloved."

With almost no exception, Western media stood by the morally and financially corrupt Thai establishment. Murder of civilians became synonymous with "restoring peace." Shooting into the crowd was labeled as the "quelling of violence."

Rarely was the illegitimate government of British-born and Oxford-educated Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva described as a "regime," (a favorite expression of Western media when dealing with anti-corporate and anti-Western governments), despite the fact that he came to power through the barrel of a gun after an illegal coup-d'etat.

While little sympathy or outrage over the killing of civilians was expressed, one could read laments over destroyed high-end real estate properties.


Southeast Asia's history of manipulated news

Southeast Asia is where manipulation of the Western media reached shameful and dizzying heights. Barbaric and brutal bombing of Laotian countryside during the Vietnam War (by U.S. forces, but also with enormous Thai assistance) was called a "secret war," reflecting the willingness of the U.S. and European press to muzzle itself in exchange for the usual perks. The whole truth about Western involvement in Cambodia, including its support for Khmer Rouge, is virtually unknown beyond the boundaries of this part of the world.

Western allies in Southeast Asia became virtually untouchable. The Philippines is very rarely exposed for its brutal feudal system, but is constantly hailed for its "democracy."

Indonesia could be designated as the textbook case. Almost no country managed to escape scrutiny of the Western media as much. The Western-backed coup in 1965 against Sukarno killed between 1 million and 3 million communists, leftists, intellectuals, teachers and people from the Chinese minority. It also opened doors to unbridled capitalism, corruption and religious (Muslim) control of the society, but mainly to the plunder of natural resources.

Naturally, most Western media outlets refused to comment on the occupation and genocide in East Timor or the massacres in Aceh. There was hardly any reporting on the more than 100,000 people who died in Papua, the remote Indonesian province consistently plundered by both Western companies and Indonesian state and military.

Read dispatches of major Western press agencies, and the conclusion you will arrive at is that Indonesia is a democracy (not the brutal feudal state it really is), the largest Southeast Asian economy (not the country with basic services like drinking water at a lower supply than in India or even Bangladesh) and "tolerant Muslim-majority state" (not the country where minorities are historically oppressed to the extreme, where churches periodically go up in flames and atheism is banned by law).

Thailand: land of violent smiles

Despite the cliché of it being a "country of smiles," Thailand is actually a country with one of the most brutal modern histories. In many ways it is a very tough, heartless and aggressive country, which oppresses almost all intellectual, religious and ethnic minorities. But you would hardly find a report on this topic.

The longest-serving (and the richest) monarch on Earth still rules the country that went through 18 military coups. Some coups were relatively "benign," but some were brutal. Pro feudal to the extreme, the Thailand ruling elite systematically liquidates its opposition, particularly any opposition striving for social justice. It has massacred left-wing students and leaders and even burned alleged communists in barrels of oil.

October 1973 saw some of the most brutal massacres on the streets of any Southeast Asian capital, in the name of the fight against communism. Again, there was no word of condemnation from the West, which promoted the country as an excellent place for beaches, massages, cheap food and sex.

AP published a piece in defense of the 1973 massacre with the title, "Experts: 'Bangkok crackdown no replay of Tiananmen,'" proclaiming that "Thailand is a democracy, albeit one now in crisis and long prone to military coups, while China was and is staunchly authoritarian."

For years, Thailand has been ruled by military juntas, with the monarch ceremonial head of state and with anti-communism the main rallying cry of Thai elites. In the name of anti-communism, local opposition was liquidated while the country participated in regional military adventures, basically invading and deeply wounding people of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia on behalf of the United States, Australia and other Western powers.

Killing and torturing of the opposition is not the only issue not ventilated on the pages of U.S. and European newspapers. Other topics include terrible treatment of minorities (many non-Thai minorities do not have citizenship and therefore are deprived of basic services and assistance) and refugees (of the more than 1 million Burmese refugees, some endure near slave labor or virtual sexual slavery).

On September 19, 2006, a military junta calling itself the Council for National Security overthrew Thaksin's government while he was abroad. The Yellow Shirts—a movement that defends monarchy and elites—inspired the event, which fell on the 60th anniversary of King Bhumibol's reign. As long as the elite structure and the monarchy were not endangered, the West did nothing to stop this gross interference in democratic process. No major international organizations left Bangkok, and no sanctions from abroad were imposed. (Compare this to the coup in Fiji, which endangered Australian interests there and led to both sanctions and an enormous media campaign). Although Thailand was never actually a democracy, since the country was for decades a staunch anti-communist warrior and ally, it was always awarded democratic status by Western media.

One of the main cadres of the Yellow Shirts, Pipob Tongchai, said in February, "The U.S. wants to have 'traditional' government in Thailand. On September 19 the U.S. took no action against the Thai military. Coups don't matter as long as there is continuity. There was no U.S. intervention. And when Thailand has 'traditional' government, it actually means that the U.S. is fully in charge. It doesn't matter who is at its head—so Thaksin really doesn't matter."

Now Western media is attempting to look objective once again, just as it was "objective" in covering East Timor up to 1999, Indonesian in 1965, or Papua and the Philippines today.

In some publications one can hear voices of reason and truth. On May 18, the International Herald Tribune published a report by Thomas Fuller and Seth Mydans that said, "The protest movement defiantly encamped in Bangkok has its roots as a reaction to Mr. Thaksin's ouster, but it has since expanded to resemble a large social movement by less-affluent segments of Thai society rebelling against what they say is an elite that meddles to control Thailand's democratic institutions."

The same reports later stated, "The government has insisted that soldiers fire only in self defense, but the death toll has been lopsidedly among civilians since violence erupted last Thursday. A government bureau said that 34 civilians and two soldiers, including General Khattiya, had been killed since Thursday and that 256 people had been wounded, almost all of them civilians. … Protesters have attributed some of the deaths to snipers who are stationed in several places around the city on top of tall buildings."

But these voices are in minority.

Not surprisingly, Western media corporations now control almost all news distributed around the world. Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Hata said, "All that Japanese networks report about Thailand is just a copy of what is said on CNN, BBC and other English-language news outlets."

In neighboring Southeast Asian countries, the situation is even more extreme. The great majority of The Jakarta Post articles covering events in Thailand now comes directly from Reuters, and the situation is not much different when it comes to publications in Bahasa Indonesia, including dailies like Sinar Harapan.

"The other side to media distortion and self-censorship is the way that mostly American academia have treated Thailand," explained Geoffrey C. Gunn, a longtime student of Lao politics and society. "What is going on now is a kind of white terror, pay back and disappearances and the entrenchment of a de facto military government. Of course big business and the West will look the other way. It was the Australian foreign minister who congratulated Abhisit on his near bloodless solution."

It has been made increasingly irrelevant what the Redshirts really wanted to achieve, the cause for which they fought and many died. Their voices—those of poor men and women from the countryside and shantytowns—were silenced again, by both media and the military.

How sad but also how true!
And how hypocritical we all "westerners" are.
Thanks for your contribution KarenHON

With the hopes of facilitating this important discussion further as to what is behind all of this madness in Thailand, I present the following video which purports to show organizers of the "red shirt" protests paying the membership.

There is an serious allegation that former PM Thaksin Shinawatra is bankrolling these protests with the hopes of regaining power. When I saw this particular video, I was aghast.

If true, this fugitive (Thaksin Shinawatra) should be brought up on terrorist charges. If true, he should be extradited back to Thailand to "face the music" for what he has done.

Do any members have a thought on this? I am most appreciative of any views on this troubling video I have unearthed. Thank you in advance.

First of all I absolutely agree with Meriposa's above posted statement.

It is too simple to declare Thaksin being a terrorist and to continue doing business as usual.
Based on my informations Interpol has not become active against Thaksin and does not see him being a terrorist. There have been wrong informations forwarded in this concern several times before already. Blaming him is no solution for the problems. It is propaganda for the plebs (mass of the people).

What does paying money to supporters of the RedShirts prove? Does it prove that they were paid and bought, and that it was not the free will and opinion of the thousands who have protested in Bangkok? Be aware these persons risked their lives and there were persons who lost their lives.
What about the money for the supporters of the Yellowshirts which was paid to them? What about the occupation of the two airports in Bangkok about 1.5 years ago?
It is about Thailand and it is about: Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi. It is about: What is allowed to the Yellowshirts is not allowed to the Redshirts, or what is allowed to some HiSo persons is not allowed to mainstream persons.

Thaksin was elected at the beginning of year 2001 by the majority of the parliament. The majority of the parliament were members of his party 'Thai rak Thai' (TRT). The elections in 2001 have been under the constitution of 1997 which has been a democratic constitution. The majority of TRT and Thaksin as a prime minister were reconfirmed in the elections of 2004 also based on the constitution of 1997. Persons may say, TRT bought votes. Buying votes was not a privilege of TRT, other politicians of other parties also did it.
May be Thaksin was corrupt, certainly he is not a good example of a democratic person, too. But the point is that he was the first prime minister who looked at the problems of the havenots in Thailand and did something to those long neglected masses. Also important is that a lot of middle class bangkokians do not like Thaksin because his government spent a lot of money for the policies for those havenots out of the tax paid by these rich bangkokians. You know many young boys and girls, perhaps sons and daughters of rich parents, drive Mercedes Benz and BMW ,whereas there are a lot of children who cannot go to the middle-school for their family cannot afford to buy them uniform and shoes.

The current constitution of year 2007 was dictated by the generals. It is not democratic, at all. Furthermore the positions of the Yellowshirts are not democratic at all but can be described being fascistic.
What is the legitimation of the Yellowshirts who brought down two governments after Thaksin?
The Redshirts want to have free elections as soon as possible. But whom do they want to restore to power. There are names of persons mentioned which really make stomach ache.

As a "westerner" I have the privilege to be critical and not amenable to propaganda.

PS:
Redshirts in my understanding are supporters of the UDD (United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship)
Yellowshirts in my understanding are supporters of the PAD (People's Alliance for Democracy)

I have seen published reports and videos (albeit in Thai that I do not understand) of Redshirt leaders admitting that Thaksin indeed helped finance the protest, along with "many others" because such a protest "requires a lot of money". I am not so quick to judge the payment of protesters. However, if there is any connection with the terrorists who implemented the devastation and injuries, this is very serious.