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THAILAND: Gov’t Toughens Stance on Protests after Crackdown

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Apr 14 2010 (IPS) - The prospect of peace returning to Bangkok’s streets following a bloody crackdown over the weekend remains elusive as the Thai government toughens its stance to go after a mass protest movement, including the arrest of its leaders.

The sprawling Marukhathayawan police camp close to Hua Hin, a resort town south of the capital, is one of six locations being prepared to house the leaders of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), whose red-shirt wearing supporters have amassed in the tens of thousands here since mid-March to pressure the government to dissolve Parliament and go for a general election.

“Six different locations have been designated to hold people detained under the emergency decree,” confirmed Panitan Wattanayagorn, a spokesman for the administration of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. “They will be held in two border patrol bases, and Hua Hin and Lopburi.”

The locations in these police and military bases to keep the detained protesters “are not prisons, but regular houses,” Panitan revealed, adding that the authorities will follow the same detention policies enforced in this kingdom’s troubled southern provinces, where an insurgency raging for over six years has resulted in close to 4,000 deaths.

A military-led force of 400 from Lopburi, home of the Thai army’s tough special forces troops, will lead the drive to apprehend the red shirts’ leaders under the harsh laws of the state of emergency currently in force. A police division has already raided the homes of some leaders after having dispensed with the need for a court warrant.

“The Abhisit government is taking a political gamble. There are certainly law and order issues that the government has to deal with,” a Western diplomat told IPS. “But given the current political temperature it could inflame passions and provoke an angry response.”

Such an outcome, in fact, is what the 16-month-old Abhisit administration has been saddled with following its sending troops to clear a protest site of the UDD in a historic part of the city on Apr. 10. But a furious gunbattle, with live rounds fired, ensued, resulting in a death toll, by Wednesday, of 18 civilians and five soldiers. Over 850 people, majority of them civilians, were injured.

By Monday, Abhisit took cover behind the word “terrorists” to explain the botched military operation. It stemmed from evidence that armed men wearing black Balaclavas and black shirts shot at the heavily armed Thai troops from behind the lines of the angry red shirt protesters, who, for the most part, had bamboo poles and wooden clubs for weapons.

“The immediate aim is to separate the terrorists from the innocent people,” the Oxford-educated patrician said during a televised address broadcast across this South-east Asian nation. “The government begs for the cooperation of innocent people to withdraw from the movement and the authorities to proceed with proper measures to solve the problem.”

“Pointing fingers at ‘terrorists’ for Saturday’s bloodshed is not going to take away from the fact that what happened was a huge intelligence failure,” an Asian diplomat noted in an interview. “From what the military and government are saying, they didn’t expect a fight of such scale. Where are they getting their information from? How credible is it?”

Such a “failure” comes in the wake of all the warnings the government and military have been making about the UDD being disposed to violence, “pointing fingers at the red shirts for nearly 30 mysterious bombs that have been exploding in Bangkok in the weeks leading to the crackdown,” the diplomat added. “So far no red shirt has been caught for these explosions, yet if there was a link, then the military should have expected trouble on April 10.”

The presence of such agents provocateurs, or the ‘third hand’ as they are known in Thailand, adds another worry for the Abhisit administration to grapple with – rebels within the military using the government-ordered crackdown to cause mayhem. Eyewitnesses confirm that the black-hooded men responding to the army’s fire operated with highly trained military skill.

“The government’s efforts to distance itself from the deaths, saying that the troops did not use live rounds, is part of an increasing propaganda drive,” said Michael Nelson, a German academic who has written extensively on Thailand. “It is an attempt to convince the public that the deaths were not caused by our (the government’s) approach.”

This narrative is being shaped “for the government not to resign, unlike previous governments since the 1970s that had to step down after a bloody crackdown on street protesters and the king had spoken,” Nelson explained to IPS. “It will be difficult survival tactic; this government now has 23 corpses on its watch.”

But pressure is mounting from the red shirts, who draw their support from a broad spectrum of social classes, most of who are from the poorer rural rice-growing belt in the north-east and the urban poor. Community radio stations in these provinces have been crackling with angry denunciations by UDD sympathisers shocked at the deaths and injuries of their supporters during the crackdown.

“We cannot let the Abhisit government continue after these killings,” a rice farmer from the north-east province of Udon Thani told IPS. “More of us will come to Bangkok if they remain in power.”

And the UDD, whose political patron is the fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has become a magnate for such anti-government rage. Since mid-March, its call for new elections has attracted nearly 150,000 protesters at certain times, coming from Bangkok and the provinces to its protest sites in the city.

The push for a poll stems from the questionable manner the Abhisit administration gained power – through a backroom deal shaped by the powerful military rather than a popular mandate. “This is more clear now that the government’s survival depends on the support the army can give or not give,” said Nelson.