By Chris Beale
Thailand goes to the polls on September 13, with nearly a thousand people still "missing" after the army's brutal crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators. It seems highly doubtful, however, that these elections will be allowed to result in a stable democratic government which could bring to justice the culprits of the May murders.
Having lived through the horror and heroism of those days, one can only be saddened and appalled by the poor quality of some media coverage of such tragic events. Even the eminent Far Eastern Economic Review — hitherto a liberal journal known for wide-ranging and objective analysis — missed a lot of what happened in Thailand.
Under this magazine's new right-wing editor — a Dan Quayle fan who admits he has almost no Asia experience — the Review seems uninterested in improving its coverage. Space could be found in it for full-page editorials that put the death toll at "several dozen", when there are nearly 1000 officially "missing". Space could not be found for the following letter correcting some of the misinformation the magazine seems to be swallowing from Thailand's army.
A week is a long time in politics, but apparently not long enough for your Bangkok correspondent, Paul Handley, to get either his facts or analysis straight. I don't know where Mr Handley was when the May 17-20 bloodletting took place. However, he certainly was not on the same Ratchadamoen Ave., and adjacent areas, that I witnessed.
Mr. Handley's report was more accurate than that which he filed a week earlier. However, he apparently missed seeing the most crucial event of all: i.e. who first pulled the trigger, on the night of the 17th/morning of the 18th May. The following points may help Mr. Handley understand what has really happened in Thailand:
1) Rioting did not start first, gunfire did. On the night of May 17th-18th, shots were fired at the crowd, then they rioted.
When demonstrators confronted the police that night, plain-clothes agent provocateurs fired multiple rounds, at close range, into an angry but overwhelmingly peaceful crowd. I heard the shots fired, intermittently but frequently, for at least thirty minutes.
Numerous people I talked to (including journalists) personally witnessed this. It's now been verified by the South China Morning Post that a British journalist saw this shooting, which killed a minimum of three. Having myself been within close earshot, all I can say is: it would be a first-class miracle if only three.
Once this shooting happened, full-scale rioting began to gradually erupt. Hitherto there had been scuffles and skirmishes between some demonstrators and police, but the crowd remained overwhelmingly peaceful albeit angry.
2) Mr. Handley wrote about a "bottle-and-brick assault" at Phan Fa r to this shooting, the only bottles I, and anyone else I talked to, had seen were water bottles.
These started to be thrown in a torrent, when riot police mercilessly clubbed a demonstrator who "waied" [gave the Buddhist greeting with folded hands] before them, completely unarmed. The result: a man photographed as dripping in blood, from head to foot, and who has since " disappeared". This was a far cry from Mr. Handley's (and Suchinda's cohort's) fantasy about ill-equipped police night-sticks breaking on first impact.
3) Even then it took quite a long time for the riot to really gather full steam. For a long while — at least one hour — I personally saw a one-to-one stand-off.
One beaten demonstrator would be grabbed from the crowd, and hauled away on a police truck amidst a torrent of verbal abuse from the crowd. Soon after a policeman would be carried away, bleeding, to an ambulance.
Yet the massive array of water cannons that I saw filling an entire street for several blocks were never used. In this same street, there was also an enormous number of riot police and soldiers. Some riot police were on the street, most were inside their compound.
These large contingents of back-up riot police, the water cannon and troops constituted an overwhelming force that could have easily blocked the demonstration at Phan Fa. If the government really intended to contain the demonstration without resorting to military violence.
4) Finally, a far from minor point. Intervention by His Royal Highness the King was not "unprecedented" as Mr. Handley writes. This was what brought an end to the killing in 1973, and 1976.