Bangkok Blues: Violence in My Hometown

During my senior year of high school, the Thai military staged a coup d’état to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. I remember tanks rolling past my house in Bangkok, and BBC and CNN going off the air after Thaksin declared a state of emergency. I even recall the Facebook status I posted the night martial law was imposed on the country: “No school!!! Stay safe everyone.” The Thai army proceeded to cancel elections scheduled for the following month and suspend the constitution. It has staged eleven coups and attempted seven others since the 1930s—more than any country in modern history. Although the 2006 coup took place with almost no bloodshed, received widespread public support, and even garnered an endorsement from the King, it made me wonder: Why is Thailand so susceptible to coups compared to other countries in the region, or even the world? The complexities of this question are now playing out once again. For the last two months, Bangkok has been embroiled in chaos. National elections, which are scheduled to take place this Sunday, are facing massive pushback from the opposition Democrat Party, which also calls itself the “yellow shirts.” Activists are blocking access to polling stations, defacing voting materials, and harassing registered voters. The flashpoint is still Thaksin, who was convicted of corruption and sentenced in absentia in the aftermath of the 2006 coup. His family, however, has continued to wield enormous influence over Thai politics; his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, was elected prime minister in a landslide victory in 2011 and still holds the position today. Thaksin supporters call themselves “red shirts.” They are made up of the rural poor, and they worship Thaksin for his populist policies that have given farmers and laborers in the north and northeast of the country free healthcare, housing loans, and much more. The “yellow shirts,” by contrast, are well educated middle class and upper class Thais. Some of my father’s business associates go from participating in the protests, to eating at fancy restaurants, to stopping by one of Bangkok’s many shopping malls before they head home for the day. Thailand’s color-coded conflict is really about the rich versus the poor, the elites versus the masses, the urban minority versus the rural majority. The current crisis began when Yingluck rammed an ill-conceived bill down the throat of Parliament in November 2013, which would have granted amnesty to her brother and pardoned the crimes of other prominent figures. The bill, which she quickly backpedaled on herself, unleashed a wave of fury at the continuing influence of the Thaksin regime in Thai politics. Opposition Democrats---whose commitment to the formalities of democracy are much less clear than their name might suggest---resigned from Parliament and began calling for less-than-democratic reforms such as the overthrow of the elected government and the naming of a “people’s council” to run the country. My family---who is not Thai, but has lived in Bangkok for 25 years---lives on Sathorn Road, a major commercial area right in the middle of the city, and near the epicenter of much of the unrest. For Bangkokians, Thai and foreign alike, the current political turmoil is a painful reminder of what happened several years ago when protests between the “red shirts” and “yellow shirts” turned the city into a virtual war zone. Back then, in spring 2010, “red shirts” occupied a large area of the city for months. One evening In May, my parents were grocery shopping to stock up on food and supplies in case the protests made it difficult to leave the house for a spell. They were too late coming back. Violence began that evening, and they had to stay at a hotel nearby because Sathorn Road, where my sister and I were holed up at home, was completely shut down by fighting. We went to sleep that night to the sound of heavy gunfire, and to the smell of burning tires. We treaded carefully the next day when we walked down the street, which was littered with debris and broken glass from destroyed telephone booths. The Stock Exchange of Thailand was set on fire a few days later, one of the city’s fanciest shopping centers was completely destroyed, and more than ninety people were killed when the army cracked down on the protesters  It was completely surreal to travel from this, to pastoral upstate New York, where I was attending college at the time. What is also surreal is that Bangkok is one of the world’s megacities; it hums along, growing, thriving, seething---but rarely imploding. When it does, every few years, it derails a lot of people’s lives. So far, the current political unrest has killed at least ten people---but in the run up to the elections, look for that number to increase. The street protests and rallies have injured hundreds of others, and the tensions will undoubtedly heat up before they cool down. Although the military, police, and politicians are all treading much more carefully than in 2010 out of fear of another military coup, the crisis has escalated rapidly---and whispers of a coup have not been quiet. In the last two months, protesters have taken over government buildings, rallies have blocked major intersections and shut down huge swaths of the city, and sporadic grenades and shootings have caused violent clashes. For the everyday residents of Bangkok, all of this makes it extremely difficult to get anywhere and do anything. The government declared a state of emergency a week ago, and Bangkok’s already-notorious traffic has gotten a whole lot worse because of the many road closures and blockades. (The alternative to the roads, the famous river ferries which troll Bangkok’s grimy canals, is too gross for my poor mother to contemplate.) But the economy is faltering. It is Chinese New Year this weekend, a time when Bangkok is usually bursting with tourists. Instead, Dusit Thani, one of the biggest hotels in the metropolis, has an occupancy rate right now of 20 percent. Small businesses and big businesses alike have seen sales plummet, which is putting stress on one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia---the country, incidentally, in which the 1997 Asian financial crisis began. Thailand is important to the United States for many reasons too. Thousands of Americans live there, and thousands more visit every year. It has also played a large role over the years as a security partner to the United States, hosting Khalid Sheik Mohammed at a CIA black site, for example. It has been a long-time military ally, providing troops and support for American military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its advantageous geographic location has made it a hub for a U.S. presence in the Asia-Pacific region. And Thailand’s southern provinces struggle to stem violence from Muslim insurgent groups---an issue of particular concern to the United States. Although “yellow shirt” demands to end the influence of the Shinawatra family in Thai politics have merit, their current tactics and demands lack legitimacy. These elites are divided among themselves; the only thing uniting them is a fear of being oppressed by the majority. They worry that Thaksin’s return to Thailand will rob them of the established influence they wield in the country, and the “red shirts” are right to oppose the old guard that did nothing for them. On the other hand, Thaksin is undoubtedly greasy; his business deals leave little to the imagination and his time in office was plagued by high-level corruption scandals. Yingluck’s tenure as prime minister is not a whole lot more than the continuation of her brother's agenda. And she was floundering long before the current unrest because of unpopular domestic policy decisions, adding fuel to the “yellow shirts” fire. For now, the whole thing feels like a movie we have watched before. A Thaksin-backed administration gets voted in. It gets undemocratically ousted. Protesters take to the streets, with lots of resulting bloodshed. And then a Thaksin-backed administration wins at the polls again. Rinse, repeat. And so to all the Thai high-schoolers stuck at home, I have this to say to you: “No school!!! Stay safe everyone.”