Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T05:31:45.971Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

15 - The Color of Politics: Thailand's Deep Crisis of Authority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2015

Charles Keyes
Affiliation:
University of Washington
Get access

Summary

On 19 May 2010, beginning at about four o'clock in the morning (I know the time because I was already on-line watching the tweets), Thai military forces began to position themselves around the Ratchaprasong/ Lumphini/Silom area of central Bangkok, where protestors known as the “Red Shirts” had been rallying since 3 April. As the troops tightened the noose, the leaders of the protestors — who now numbered about 3,000 — decided to surrender in order to limit the loss of lives that they realized would happen. Many of the women and children at the protest site had taken refuge in nearby Wat Pathumwanaram. Six people, including a nurse, were shot at the temple. With these deaths, the total number of those killed in the conflict between 10 April and 19 May was officially pegged at eighty-seven. Of these, eleven were soldiers, and the others were civilians.2 The total number injured was at least 1,800, the majority of them civilians.

After the military moved to end the protest rally, a number of hardcore followers of the Red Shirts, clearly following advance planning, set fire to buildings in the central business district, with the greatest destruction being at the Central World Plaza of Bangkok, the second largest shopping mall in Southeast Asia. Moreover, Red Shirts mobilized followers up-country to attack and burn provincial office buildings in Udon Thani, Khon Kaen, Mukdahan, and Ubon Ratchathani in northeastern Thailand, from which many of the followers of the Red Shirts come. The toll of dead and injured and the destruction of buildings made this the worst civil violence in Thailand's history.

What I wish to do here is first to talk about who the Red Shirt supporters were (and are) and then to discuss the implications of this intense civil conflict. It is my contention that the strong support for the Red Shirts from among those living in and originating from rural northeastern Thailand is indicative of deep division of Thai society that cannot be overcome by the prosecution of the Red Shirt leaders or government “development” programmes that perpetuate the traditional hierarchical relationship between officials and subjects. Northeastern families today have become increasingly “cosmopolitan” because they are linked to a global labour force, have sophisticated understandings of Bangkok society, and yet still retain long-standing resentment for being looked down on as country bumpkins.

Type
Chapter
Information
Bangkok, May 2010
Perspectives on a Divided Thailand
, pp. 171 - 189
Publisher: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×