http://blogs.straitstimes.com/2010/4/22/flashpoint-silom
1am, Thursday : I got to Sala Daeng yesterday (Wed) afternoon, and made my way to the Au Bon Pain cafe right next to the Dusit Thani hotel, at the corner of the intersection across from the Red Shirt barricades next to Lumpini Park.
A couple of hundred pro-government demonstrators were gathered on the sidewalk outside waving Thai flags and yelling at the Red Shirts. There were police making sure they stayed clear of the road to let traffic through. More police were lined up at the side gate to the Dusit. But passions seemed high on the part of the flag-waving pro-government crowd, and their numbers were steadily growing. Sensing the mood, I tweeted that Sala Daeng was an accident waiting to happen.
Later, I watched it unfold. There was little satisfaction in having been right.
I had made a round of the Red Shirt barricades by then. Behind the bristling bamboo and car tyre barricade some four to five metres high, the Red Shirts were roaming around with bamboo staves, some of them sharpened. One seemed to have arrows. Others seemed to be making slingshots.
I was told by journalist friends that they had chilli powder mixtures as well though I didn't see any. I didn't see any firearms. At one point a big BMW pulled up and reversed behind the barricade and a uniformed chauffeur got out, opened the boot and started unloading food. Another time, a pickup truck came by and Red Shirts on the truck hurled big plastic bags full of styrofoam-packed food high into the barricade where they were grabbed by eager hands and distributed. Many motorists wound down windows as they passed and cheered the Red Shirts.
I made my way back to the other side of the street and hunkered down in the Au Bon Pain and wrote my first report while the yelling outside grew more and more hysterical. Then the cafe finally decided to close early, and I shifted to the business centre at the Dusit and wrote my second report. When I was done, around 8.30pm, I went back out and joined other journalists watching the drama unfold.
The mood among the pro-government crowd became more and more ragged, with a couple of passing red-shirted taxi drivers having their cabs bashed. But around 10pm, the mood appeared to settle as many people left. I was on the point of heading home when some rowdy men began to get out of hand, running out into the intersection threateningly.
I saw the precise moment when the riot started. At around 11pm, some of the pro-government demonstrators were running out into the intersection taunting the Reds, and then one finally let fly with a large stone. That of course was the signal for a barrage of stones and bottles from the pro-government mob.
Only about 20 or so were involved, but it was enough to create tremendous chaos. Glass shattered on the street and rocks cracked and bounced as they went for the Reds – who retaliated with rocks and slingshots of their own but held their line and did not come charging out.
Meanwhile cross-traffic was still flowing, crunching over the rocks and broken glass. I wonder if some of the cars were hit as they crossed between the battling sides.
The Reds vastly outnumbered the pro-government protestors, but held their ground. The pro-government men periodically surged out into the intersection to throw missiles at the barricades. Some hung back, crouching in the shrubbery on the verge, aiming carefully and letting loose with slingshots – deadly when fired with small ball bearings or marbles.
All the while, police deployed on the ground, and soldiers on the pedestrian overpass above, did absolutely nothing to stop or separate the two sides. In fact the police even moved one of their trucks out of the way of the rampaging pro-government men.
A Thai man dressed in a white shirt spoke to me as we took cover behind a wall, with rocks flying around us. "What do you think Thais should do?" he asked me. It was a difficult question. I thought for a moment and said "Sit down and talk about the issues".
He looked sad and then told me that "Thais only learn when many people are killed".
Seconds later, a large Thai man in ordinary clothing translated a sign lying on the sidewalk which proclaimed that Red Shirts were goons in the pay of ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra. Then he put his arm around me and led me away and whispered in my ear "I am Red Shirt".
He said he was a taxi drover, and the pro-government men were from the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), the formerly yellow-clad right-wing group that closed down three airports in 2008 to paralyse the pro-Thaksin government of the time, paving the way for its fall which eventually came through a court decision to disband it because one of its executives had cheated in the last election. That paved the way for the Democrat Party to take power.
It is obvious to independent observers that the so-called "no colour" or "multi-colour" crowds that have emerged lately, are largely the PAD in a different form. They have been urging the government to crack down on the Red Shirts of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), and have even threatened to do it themselves if the government and army did not.
They certainly tried at Sala Daeng, though not in force. But the Reds were fairly disciplined and thankfully the riot did not escalate into a full-blown fight. At least twice, the Red Shirts fired firecrackers at the pro-government men who ran helter skelter, but returned to pelt them with stones. The men were banging paving stones on the hard concrete to break them into smaller pieces. One young man ran past me with a sack full of empty bottles, heading for the fight.
At one point a foreigner who appeared to be a tourist, wearing black clothes but with a red armband, was roughed up by the pro-government men, but some among them got him away. That was at around 1145pm and seemed to trigger the police into action.
They formed a double line at the top of the road facing the pro-government crowd, which included some women who were hurling rocks and bottles as much as the men. The arrival of the police seemed to embolden them and they started screaming abuses at the Reds – insulting Thai terms like "hia" – monitor lizard – and "khwai" – buffalo, a common insult used by a certain section of the Bangkokian middle classes against rural people from the north-east, where most of the Reds are from.
The police then turned around and faced towards the Reds, which came as a bit of a surprise. But two big police trucks finally showed up then and parked right in front of the police lines, and then the violence seemed to peter out a bit.
The interesting part of the evening was that the police and soldiers did nothing to stop the pro-government crowd, which incidentally was also, like the Reds, in violation of the Emergency Decree which prohibits assembly of more than five people. Yet they were allowed to assemble and yell at the Reds in a gradual escalation all afternoon, which finally exploded at night with the police and soldiers simply looking on.
Sala Daeng was and could be the flashpoint, which will see Thais battling Thais in this divided country that appears to many, to be sliding into a civil war. The right-wingers say they are fighting for the nation and the King. The Red Shirts – from the same nation – say they are fighting for their democratic right to have an election and have the results accepted and respected. The right-wingers despise and denigrate them as ignorant rabble seduced by Thaksin's money.
Someone tweeted me in the middle of all this, to say that "This is straight out of the 1976 playbook. Get goons to do the dirty work and wash your hands of it".
The year 1976 was a dreadful one in which mobs egged on by right-wing rabble-rousers launched into a horrible massacre at Thammasat University, in which leftist students were hanged and beaten and shot to death.
Thais say their nation has never been so divided as it today. The rage on either side is palpable. Families and friends and couples have been torn by it. Red Shirts kick and stamp on pictures of Privy Council president general Prem Tinsulanonda, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, and army chief general Anupong Paochinda, and scrawl obscene and insulting graffiti against them. Pro-government right-wing elements heckle and attack Red Shirts and kick and smash their cars and shout "Ai! Khwai!" as they pass.
A people versus people bloodbath may be part of the playbook, forcing the army to wade in. But times are different now from 1976, and there is no telling what the consequences may be.
April 10 was a signal of just how bad things can become. And they could get a lot worse unless there is some political compromise at the top. The window for such a compromise, however, is closing fast.
In today's The Nation, Supalak Ganjanakhundee wrote: "Thais appear to be keen on expanding the ongoing conflict instead of containing it, with many different colour-coded groups emerging to confront the Red-Shirt protesters. Such confrontation would only orchestrate violence, if not a civil war."
It is worth quoting Supalak further, because he explains the echo of 1976.
"On Tuesday" he wrote, "an unknown group of people put up stickers on Silom Road saying that the Red-Shirt group wanted a new Thailand with Thaksin as president. A move like this suggests that the right wing and elitist forces are employing old tactics to label the opponents as anti-monarchists."
''On October 6, 1976, student activists in Thammasat University were massacred just because they were accused of being anti-monarchists.
"The stickers on Silom Road prompted an immediate denial from Thaksin, with the Red-Shirt leaders declaring on Tuesday that it was a dirty political game. They know the power of anti-monarchy accusations.
"If Abhisit and his government are gentle and fair enough, they should be able to limit the conflict and stop a third hand from using this sensitive issue to make things worse.
"Calling the protesters terrorists and turning a normal political protest into a national security issue and a threat to the revered institution, is uncivilised and unfair. Besides, such tactics will only make the problem more complicated and difficult to resolve," concluded Supalak.
No comments:
Post a Comment