Liberal thunderers silent on Thailand
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An unelected government declares the center of its capital a free-fire zone. Army snipers positioned on rooftops gun down demonstrators. The demonstrators are supporters of the previous, democratically elected government – ousted in a judicial/parliamentary coup backed by the army. It is the second time in four years that an elected government supported by the demonstrators has been removed in a coup.
This is the reality of Thailand today as a government crackdown on the Red Shirts that has so far claimed 29 lives enters its 5th day.
You might expect human rights organizations to be besieging the media, demonstrating outside Thai embassies and organizing boycotts.
But search on the website of Amnesty International for "Thailand" and you will see the message "no results found". Amnesty refuses to adopt people jailed under Thailand's draconian lèse majesté laws as prisoners of conscience.
Human Rights Watch is calling for the government – yes the same government that is gunning down its citizens – to arrest wrongdoers "from both sides." You could hardly make it up.
Perhaps you expect the international press to be carrying editorials denouncing the government's use of force? Actually the papers are full of hints that the violence is being fomented by "dark forces" among the demonstrators. When a Red Shirt leader was hit in the head by a sniper's bullet – while being interviewed by the New York Times – the press printed government rumors that a faction within the Red Shirts had shot one of their own.
The media constantly repeat the government canard that the Red Shirts are former Prime Minister Taksin Shinawat's rent-a-crowd. Perhaps the journalists have not asked themselves the question; do demonstrators really face armed troops for money? How much are they being paid to lay down their lives?
The quasi-fascist Yellow Shirts, whose strong-arm occupation of Bangkok Airport (with the kind permission of the army) helped bring down the previous elected government, are more honest. They say Taksin "bought" the loyalty of the poor by introducing a universal health care scheme. People voting for policies that benefit them! Whatever next?
It is really not so difficult to explain the strange silence on Thailand. This is a class war. It is a movement of farmers and factory workers; of those who slave as taxi drivers, waitresses and bar girls, servicing tourists who, according to age and taste, go "totally tribal" on a desert island, get stoned and have inappropriate piercings, or hang out in the go-go bars of Bangkok and Pattaya.
Everyone just wishes these annoying poor people would go away so the fun and the money-making can continue.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the barricades, is the baby-faced, Oxford-educated, well-spoken Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva – head of the perfect pro-business administration – a government of business, for business, by business.
And that is just what the human rights organizations and the press like.
Meanwhile, we sit and wait for news of a massacre in the "land of smiles."
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