The RED SHIRT Crisis in Bangkok!

[Harry Lime]

Viewpoint - Time Magazine
How Thailand Can Avoid a New Insurgency

By Andrew Marshall / Bangkok Thursday, May. 27, 2010

This week's most depressing statistic comes courtesy of an unnamed Thai government source quoted in the Bangkok Post. The source reveals that the military had been willing to kill "between 200 and 300 people" and injure "several thousand" in its operation last week to storm the Red Shirt protest site in Bangkok's commercial district.

Compared with this grim estimate, the actual toll on May 19 €” 15 dead, hundreds wounded €” must seem almost satisfactory. But the official death toll from all clashes and bomb attacks since April 10, when the military botched an attempt to clear another Red Shirt protest site in old Bangkok, is hardly a cause for celebration: 85 are dead, and 1,402 have been injured. (Watch a video about the Bangkok protests.)

Many Thais have compared recent events to "Black May" of 1992, the last time troops fired live rounds on Bangkok protesters. Back then, 48 people were killed, possibly many more. (The number is disputed.) But there is a much more recent example of the Thai military killing its own citizens, and one that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva might bear in mind as he tries to heal his divided country.

It was an atrocity that began as a protest. On October 25, 2004, hundreds of people gathered outside Tak Bai police station in the southern province of Narathiwat to protest the arrest of six local men. Thailand is a predominantly Thai-speaking Buddhist country, but most people in its three southernmost provinces are Malay-speaking Muslims who have chafed against rule from faraway Bangkok for more than a century. In January 2004, a raid on an army camp, also in Narathiwat, sparked a region-wide uprising against the government. (Read more about violence in southern Thailand.)

The events at Tak Bai quickly turned nasty. Protesters hurled rocks and reportedly tried to storm the police station. Police and soldiers opened fire, killing seven people, then arrested hundreds of protesters, most of them young Muslim men. With their hands bound behind their backs, they were thrown five or six deep into military trucks. Seventy-eight of them suffocated or were crushed to death.

Though various insurgent groups had been violently resisting Bangkok's rule for decades, Tak Bai radicalized a new and arguably more ruthless generation of fighters. Harrowing footage of soldiers beating and kicking protesters, then tossing them into trucks, was quickly banned by the authorities, but still secretly circulates through households in the south. Six years on, the ongoing conflict has killed more than 4,100 people, most of them civilians.

Tak Bai took place under former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose brutal policies helped ignite the southern insurgency. (On Wednesday, a Bangkok court issued an arrest for Thaksin on terrorism charges for allegedly masterminding the Red Shirts' violent resistance.) But it could still provide a lesson for Thailand's current leader. Could the Rajaprasong crackdown radicalize the Reds as Tak Bai did the southern insurgents? Could Red strongholds in the north or northeast become no-go zones for soldiers and government officials, just as many districts in the southern provinces already are? After recent events in Bangkok, neither scenario feels so far-fetched. Politics is so polarized, and both sides are evidently so willing to use deadly force, that many Thais fear that other parts of their nation could become "just like the south."

There is also another parallel. Part of Abhisit's post-Rajaprasong reconciliation plan is to set up what his government has called "an independent fact-finding committee" to investigate the recent violence. This is vital: Justice is a great healer, something Abhisit acknowledged just six months ago in a speech about the southern insurgency. "A heavy presence of security forces was not the only answer to the conflict," he said in late November. "We believe in development and an unbiased justice system."

But biased justice €” which of course is no justice at all €” doesn't heal. It poisons. This is especially true when the main agents for maintaining law €” soldiers and police €” effectively remain above it. Again, consider Tak Bai: Almost a year ago, on May 29, 2009, a provincial court ruled that soldiers and police bore no responsibility for the protesters' deaths. Predictably, a surge of violence followed the verdict, both by Muslim insurgents and Buddhist vigilantes. It culminated less than two weeks later the slaying of 11 worshippers at Al-Farquan mosque in Narathiwat province €” one of the deadliest attacks the south has ever witnessed. A police investigation of the attack implicated pro-government militiamen.

By promising "unbiased justice" but presiding over further atrocities, Abhisit has lost the south. Without a full and impartial investigation of the recent deadly clashes in Bangkok, he might yet lose the rest of the country. Both Thai and international human rights activists, including New-York based Human Rights Watch, have called for an independent inquiry to scrutinize, among other highly contentious issues, the use of deadly force by both soldiers and armed Red Shirts.

Privately, however, they admit that such an inquiry might go nowhere. Abhisit is now engaged in two struggles: one against insurgents in the far south, the other against Red Shirts in the north and northeast. In both, he relies utterly upon the powerful Thai military. That's why he might be reluctant to offend the top brass by investigating the actions of their soldiers. This would be a mistake. "It's in the interests of a united Thailand to come up with a credible inquiry," says Sunai Phasuk, a researcher with the New-York based Human Rights Watch. "Without justice and accountability there can be no reconciliation." (See pictures of the end of the Bangkok protests.)

Here's another body count: 19. That's how many lives the southern conflict has claimed in Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani provinces from April 10 to May 19. During the same period, four times that number died in Bangkok, but only for those six angry weeks. The people of southern Thailand have been dying by the thousands for years, and, with yet another government in faraway Bangkok distracted by its own political survival, will probably be dying for many years to come.

See TIME's Pictures of the Week below:

Read more:[url="null"] ]http://www.time.com/time....RL]

Photo: Remnants
Bullets and a picture of former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra are found in a Buddhist temple previously occupied by Thai "red shirt" protestors. The Thai army has been sweeping through the central Bangkok shopping district in search of weapons and explosives hidden by protestors during the 10-weeks they occupied the city center.

[Harry Lime]

Time Magazine

From Bangkok to Cannes, Thai Political Tensions Remain

By Robert Horn / Bangkok Monday, May. 24, 2010

As the curtain came down on the most dramatic and deadly political upheaval in Thailand's recent history, the country awoke Monday to learn that one of its own filmmakers had won the coveted Palme d'Or at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival for a drama about a man who talks to ghosts. Apichatpong Weerasethakul became the first Thai director to clinch the prestigious prize for his film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, about a dying man meditating on the meaning of existence through conversations with the spirits of his deceased wife and son. Apichatpong explained that the movie is a parable of a Thai film industry that is being strangled by censorship.

Before he captured the award for best film, Apichatpong had blasted Thailand's censorship rules, saying they prevented filmmakers from producing movies about the country's political conflict. "Thailand is a violent country. It is controlled by a group of mafia. Our governments, present and past, have been such a mess," Apichatpong told the Bangkok Post a day before winning the Palme d'Or. He claims Thai cinema is in terminal decline. "We cannot make a movie on the current situation due to laws that ban threats to national security." (See pictures of the showdown in Bangkok.)

Thailand has been under a State of Emergency since April 7 because of aggressive protests by the Red Shirts, a mix of rural and urban poor, and supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in a 2006 coup. Last week, the army dispersed the Red Shirts from their six-week occupation of central Bangkok. During the violence of the past two months, 70 people were killed and more than a thousand wounded. Parts of the city, including the Stock Exchange, were burned to the ground by protesters after their leaders surrendered to police.

Apichatpong said this is an important moment in Thai history that would force Thais to re-examine their society and beliefs, citing the gap between rich and poor as a source of the conflict. "It reminds me of the film by Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing. We now have to ask ourselves what the right thing is," he said.(Read of the end of Bangkok's siege.)

But Thaksin, considered the driving force and chief funder of the protests, was urging Thais through his Twitter messages on Monday to study another film €” Avatar €” so they could learn how people using makeshift weapons could defeat a modern army with advanced weaponry. His comments came as analysts and Red Shirts said the conflict could devolve into a guerrilla war, with some fearing the country could become engulfed in the kind of insurgent violence plaguing Thailand's deep south. More than 4,000 people have been killed there in recent years as shadowy groups of Islamic fighters have attacked government offices, schools and innocent villagers.

While militant factions of his Red Shirt followers did use makeshift weapons, such as slingshots and homemade rockets against soldiers, they also used grenades, pistols and assault rifles. Red Shirt radio urged protesters to commit "all-out arson." Earlier, Red Shirt leader Nattawut Saikua had told followers to "burn it all down. I will take responsibility." Another Red Shirt leader, Arisman Pongrongrueang, called on each protester to bring a liter of gasoline to the capital and "turn Bangkok into a sea of flames."

"This was no accident, it was all planned," says Nopporn Chinvipas, a retired engineer who came to take photos of the burned out Siam Theater on Sunday. One of the first modern cinemas in Thailand, it was where he met his wife decades ago. As he spoke, thousands of volunteers, common people from around the city, were cleaning up the dirt and debris left over from the Red Shirt rampage. They scrubbed streets, scooped up charred waste and washed the soot off of the pillars of the Skytrain commuter rail line.

Pingjai, Nopporn's wife, says that she took part in pro-democracy demonstrations in October 1973 that successfully overthrew a military government. "The government must listen to the poor. Many don't have enough opportunity. But all governments have been the same. These problems existed under Thaksin too," she says. She claims the root of the problem is poor education. Corrupt local leaders, community radio stations and the Red television station were feeding people disinformation. "It has been burned into their brains," says Pingjai, surveying the burned out remains of Bangkok.

Not far away, in the slum district of Klong Toey, hundreds were on the streets sweeping up the mess. One participant told TIME that about 20% of the volunteers were poor people from the slum, while most of the rest were middle class people and a few wealthy Bangkokians who had come out to help. "I think some of the Reds are poor and need help. Not all of them did this. I'm not even sure the ones who did this were poor," said Patchanike Makaew, a travel agent who mopped up the road with her eight-year-old daughter. "Seeing all these people help gives me hope for my city and my country." It's a hope worth clinging to as specters far from the screens of Cannes continue to loom over Thailand.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time....Pk5FxvR

Photo: A Thai volunteer rubs away graffiti that reads "Red Army" in Bangkok, Thailand, on May 23 2010.
Barbara Walton / EPA

[thegame925]

Situation in NE Thailand normal after curfew's enforcement lifted: senior army officer
English.news.cn   2010-05-30 19:16:08 FeedbackPrintRSS

BANGKOK, May 30 (Xinhua) -- The situation in North East Thailand has been normal after the Thai government canceled a curfew's enforcement, Commander of the Region 2 Army, Lieutenant- General Weewarit Jonsamrit, said on Sunday, the Thai News Agency ( TNA) reported.

The North East Thailand is the stronghold of the anti- government United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) or the "red-shirt" people.

The 2nd Army Region's headquarters is based in a northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva canceled the curfew's enforcement on Saturday (May 29), while said the emergency rule's imposition is still essential.

Lieutenant-General Weewarit's remark echoed a statement made earlier by Prime Minister Abhisit saying that during the first night after the curfew was lifted the situation appeared normal.

However, "concerned security agencies have kept assessing the situation after the lifting of the curfew's enforcement," Abhisit said.

The government has imposed the curfew in capital Bangkok and 23 provinces of Thailand's 76 provinces since May 19 after angry protesters set afire state buildings, shopping malls, and banks in capital Bangkok since their major leaders surrendered to police and announced the end of their over six-week rally at Bangkok's prime commercial area of Ratchaprasong.

The curfew's enforcement, which ended on 28, had forbidden the public to go outdoors during 24:00 hours to 04:00 a.m., local time.


Editor: Wang Guanqun

Direct Link to News Article

[reflections]

thank God the problem is over so we can all visit again

[richmond]

I have been trying to ring a couple of mobiles in the pattaya area with no result has the phone system been damaged during the recent troubles??

[f0xxee]

No it's just your average shitty Thai telecomms.
Being a public holiday on Friday (A big Buddha day) the phone lines and internet runneth over, and drop outs on both are routine.

[deepthroat]

So, is it way to premature to say "business as usual" again?

[f0xxee]

Depends on what you call business as usual.
If you mean Puea Thai taking a purely contrary stance to all uterances of the Prime Minisiter, if you mean Thaksin continues to try to subvert the parlimentry process, if you mean the poor saps down south continue to immolate all and sundry and if you mean the corruption continues neck deep then it is business as usual.The cycle of unrest is continuing unabated and will until a generational change brought on (IMHO) via the internet teaches the poor in the north that they are more than serfs to a fuedal landlord. This is what (again IMHO) is starting to occur now. The children of Isaan are less likely to be the obediant little voters their parents were, as they are better informed.

[Stewart]

(richmond @ May 31 2010,11:34) I have been trying to ring a couple of mobiles in the pattaya area with no result has the phone system been damaged during the recent troubles??

She is probably with a customer!

[deepthroat]

Thai "red shirts" not finished, need time to regroup

(Reuters) - Thai anti-government protesters have vowed to return to the streets after an army crackdown ended their nine-week protest, but with most of their leaders detained or in hiding, it could take months to revive their campaign.

THAILAND

Southeast Asia's second-biggest economy is still recovering from modern Thailand's worst political violence, which killed 88 people and wounded more than 1,800 as troops dispersed protesters from central Bangkok.

The occupation of an upscale commercial district by thousands of red-shirted protesters representing the rural and urban poor decimated the vital tourism industry, sent foreign investors fleeing Thailand's capital markets, and will shave a point or two from projected economic growth this year, the government says.

Calm has returned since troops forcibly dislodged protesters demanding immediate elections from their fortified encampment in ritzy central Bangkok on May 19, providing a window of opportunity to dip back into what had been one of Asia's hottest emerging markets. The window might not stay open for long.

Thailand remains fundamentally divided between what some analysts see as a peasant and proletariat movement largely backing ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and what they call an aristocratic "establishment elite" of royalists, military brass, bureaucrats and the educated middle class.

Thaksin, ousted in a 2006 coup, or his proxy parties have won every election in Thailand over the past decade, and would most likely win the next one, whenever that is.

But critics of the graft-convicted and self-exiled Thaksin say he and his allies are manipulating protesters' discontent over genuine grievances to engineer his comeback.

The government has suggested Thaksin may have been behind recent violence which authorities blamed on shadowy gunmen who were lurking behind unarmed protesters. He and protest leaders have denied any link with the gunmen.

The markets are no longer churning, but foreign investors remain on the sidelines awaiting political clarity. Five-year credit default swaps, a measure of sovereign risk, are trading at a spread of around 145 after going widening to 170 in May, their highest in a year, driven up by tremors in the euro zone as well as the political instability.

SHORT-TERM HORIZON

"Investors with a short-time horizon will see an opportunity in the current relative calm and move back into the market," said Bill Witherell, chief global economist with Cumberland Advisors.

"Investors that take a longer-term perspective ... would like to see some movement toward improving the underlying situation, some reason to believe that greater stability can be achieved."

"As long as alternative Asian markets offer greater stability and at least equal expected returns, Thailand is going to find it difficult to get international investors to return, particularly when global risk aversion is as high as it seems to be," he said.

Foreign investors sold a net $2.04 billion of stocks between April 10 -- the first major clash between troops and protesters -- and May 31. Compare that to a $1.8 billion wave of foreign buying from mid-February to April 9, a day before the gunbattle in the heart of old Bangkok that killed 25 people.

For now, the "red shirt" movement appears in disarray.

"Our grassroot activities will continue but it may take months before the organization as a whole recovers," said Pongsak Phusitsakul, a doctor who helped organize "red shirt" rallies.

"The movement is in no way dead. But I have no desire to rot in a military detention camp."

After top leaders surrendered and were taken into military detention, others, like Pongsak, went underground. A state of emergency is in place in Bangkok and elsewhere banning rallies.

Many activists have turned off their phones. Some have slipped away from home and shut down community radio stations that were instrumental in mobilizing support.

Karn Yuenyong, director of the independent Siam Intelligence Unit think tank, said financial sanctions on protest leaders, censorship of "red shirt" media and the beginning of the rice-planting season meant there would be no quick return to the streets.

With images of rioting, arson, and looting constantly replayed by the media, a stigma of being associated with the "red shirts" is compounding problems facing the movement.

"We have a lot of sympathizers, but there are people who want to distance themselves for now," said Sriwan Janhong, a disc jockey for a red-shirt radio in the northern city of Chiang Mai.

"They are scared they will be labeled uneducated and violent thugs so they give money and support but ask to stay anonymous. Some people think twice these days before identifying themselves as red shirt."

HARDER LINE

Some analysts say that since the recent violence, the government is more willing to take a hard line with the disparate movement of Thaksin supporters, democracy activists and leftists.

"The government is keeping the state of emergency. It has closed newspapers, radios, websites, and tracks the movement of regional leaders," said Charnvit Kasertsiri, a prominent political historian. "They are comfortable doing this in the name of fighting terrorism and republicanism."

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva had offered a November election in a failed bid to negotiate an end to the protest. But he is now in no rush to call polls.

Abhisit, who protesters say came to power illegitimately in an army-engineered parliamentary vote in December 2008, said on Saturday an election before the end of the year was unlikely but did not rule out a snap poll before his term ends in early 2012.

"Abhisit emerges strong in Bangkok -- he has the powerful middle class who yearn for some normalcy," said Charnvit. "The voice of criticism, no matter how legitimate, has been drowned out by a sense of relief and triumphalism."

But analysts say the rift in Thai society is wider than ever, raising the possibility of a radicalized, underground movement.

"There will be rumblings up-country. Some may resort to taking up arms, conducting an insurgency," said Thitinan Pongsudhiraka, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University.

Some analysts say Thaksin, who lives abroad to avoid jail on a graft conviction he says was politicized, is determined to bring down the government before an annual military reshuffle in September that could strengthen the government's power base.

He may still try to force the pace.

"Thaksin wanted to end the game quickly. While some idealists in the movement may opt for a long-term struggle, Thaksin may take more risks," said a top security official who declined to be identified.

(Editing by Robert Birsel and Bill Tarrant)

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6510QX20100602

[Socrates999]

Government survived no confidence vote today.

Doubt they'll be stepping down anytime soon. Offer made, twice, rejected twice, with violence.

[thaibound]

so are the next two months a 'window of opportunity' in which to holiday politics-free before the reds regroup under thaksin in time to protest the military reshuffle in september?
should i be booking this week and traveling asap straight to pattaya and/or samui? or would a more reasonable person sit tight for a while longer?

[pacman]

    I wouldn't suggest waiting. These reports of the Reds re-grouping mean the situation can change anytime but I doubt we will see a new battle front this year.

I suggest you go soon while the girls are eager to please & the bars have less farangs vying for the one you fancy.

Any day you wake up in Pattaya is a good day so why not get there before the situation goes pear shape again & you have to sit tight waiting for it to be over.

At least if you are there & something does start, it isn't us that they will be targetting. I have holidayed happily through 2 coups so far in my life & I expect I will get to see another.

[f0xxee]

I think (and its only opinion) that the red shirts lost a lot of ground due to a few very bad miscalcualtions:

--Storming the hospital.
--Agreeing to the "Roadmap to Peace" (maybe they don't like hackneyed phrases?) and then reneging.
--Inciting the crowd to burn and destroy set targets and being video taped doing so.

I think even the poor from Klong Toey got the shits with them, as it seems they had little more respect for the poor and down trodden OUTSIDE their barriers than the people they protested against.
I think the episodes of burning and looting horrified the masses, as in my experience Thais are not thieving bastards, nor are they particularly vandalous.
I think the latest censure motion was less than damaging, and if the BKK Post has it right, Abhasit came out on top, with probably a better image than he has enjoyed in the past.
I think the lastest push to Interpol to have Whacky Thacky posted home on terrorist charges may stick if they prove within reason that he both incited and paid for the red shirt rallys, and therefore the damage and deaths arrising. And I am guessing that following the money trail as they did to shut down red shirt income they have the paperwork.

The destruction in the North hurt a lot of people but got a lot less press.... Yet people in Mrs F's family are now suffering unemployment due to it: If you are going to burn down the Local Gov't you are going to put people out of work.

In the end they were their own worst enemies and proved themselves to be fragmented and without clear goals and leadership: a bunch of angst-mongers who joined forces... and for what?

[thegame925]

MARKETS

Foreign investors take Thailand€™s political turmoil in their stride

Foreign investors have barely flinched at the sight of the blood in the streets of central Bangkok. But their calm has less to do with courage than with a rational review of the risks and rewards of investing in Thailand €“ and by extension in other Asian emerging markets.

Admittedly, foreign investors have sold $1.8bn worth of Thai equities this month, including the tense days in the middle of May, when more than 50 people were killed as troops broke up the anti-government demonstration in the capital. This has cancelled out big inflows earlier in 2010 and leaves foreigners net sellers for the year to date to the tune of more than $630m.

But with foreigners accounting for about a quarter of the turnover in a market capitalised at about $180bn, the withdrawal is hardly a rout. By comparison, foreign investors took nearly $5bn out of the market in 2008 when the global financial crisis struck.

Moreover, this month€™s sell-off has been prompted more by the current global turmoil, triggered by the eurozone€™s troubles, than by Thai politics. In the general flight to safety from emerging markets, Thailand has stood up fairly well. The market is back where it was at the end of December, compared with a 10.8 per cent drop in the MSCI index of Asia excluding Japan.

€œWhat is of most concern to investors is what is going on in the developed world. In emerging markets, even where things are happening, as in Thailand, investors are prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt,€ says Philip Poole, global head of emerging markets research at HSBC, the UK bank.

Investors are willing to indulge Thailand in particular because of its long record of economic growth, not least during the successive political crises of recent years. They do not wish to pull out of one of the most open and investor-friendly of east Asia€™s fast-growing export-led economies, whose government has within the past month raised its 2010 gross domestic product forecast from an increase of 3.3-5.3 per cent to 4.3-5.8 per cent.

Officials are still counting the cost of the damage done by the protesters, and the effect on tourism and on manufacturing industries that suffered from supply breaks and stoppages.

Honda and Toyota, for example, two of the country€™s largest investors, have had to cut shifts at their facilities north of Bangkok because of the government curfew in the capital and 23 other provinces.

However, the bulk of the damage has been to the tourism sector, which accounts for 6.5 per cent of GDP, and a narrow spectrum of retailers and hotel owners that had assets around the main protest sites. The Tourism Authority of Thailand estimates that the protests will cost the industry Bt5120bn in lost revenue.

Estimates of the total cost of the protests stand at about 0.5 of a percentage point of GDP. That is significant but it is a loss investors are ready to forgive in an economy that recorded a 12 per cent increase in the first quarter.

In addition, the country€™s financial position is sound. After the 1998 Asian financial crisis, Thailand cut its foreign debt, which now stands at $66bn or a modest 25 per cent of GDP, while foreign currency reserves are more than $140bn.

Fund managers today are also ready to take political upheaval in their stride, says Kevin Grice, of Capital Economics, who has covered emerging markets for 20 years, because they €œare more knowledgeable and take a more calibrated approach. That is why waves of contagion are diminishing over time.€

Two decades ago investors saw Thailand as exotic but €“ because access to other countries, notably China, was heavily restricted €“ as one of the few ways of boarding the east Asian economic juggernaut. So fund managers paid more attention to every Bangkok cough or sneeze.

In the past two decades, however, they have witnessed political shocks in several states, including Indonesia, South Korea and the Philippines, as well as Thailand. They have come to believe that it will take an awful lot of politics to upset the mighty east Asian economic machine.Stefan Wagstyl and Tim Johnson for the Financial Times May 31st 2010