Regional News
Thailand’s Latest Political Movement Takes to the Streets
BANGKOK – The masked protesters are the latest development in an ongoing fight for political control Mim Putita, a student living in Bangkok, had never taken part in a political rally before.
But on Sunday she joined her cousin, aunt and about 1,000 other anti-government protestors marching from the plush Central World shopping mall, past the even plusher Paragon mall and on to the Bangkok Art and Culture Center where they stood behind a cordon of a dozen riot police. Many donned white Guy Fawkes masks, the most recent addition to Thailand’s color-coded political spectrum.
Anti-government protesters wearing official and homemade versions of the mask attend a rally outside a shopping mall in Bangkok.“We don’t want Yingluck to be the prime minister,” said Pom Jutharat, Mim’s aunt, criticizing Thai Premier Yingluck Shinawatra. “It’s because of corruption.”
She then started to lay into Yingluck’s brother Thaksin, Thailand’s exiled former prime minister until a 2006 coup, and a figure widely viewed as the real power behind the current administration. “Thaksin is not our prime minister but he sent Yingluck to do what he wants,” said Pom.
On the surface, Thailand’s latest anti-Shinawatra movement seems new. With its gleaming white V-for-Vendetta masks, the movement has grown in recent weeks, spreading to different parts of the country for the first time on Sunday.
In the southern province of Surat Thani 100 protestors travelled in a car convoy chanting anti-government slogans. Similar numbers of masked demonstrators appeared further south in Songkhla on the border with Malaysia, and there were protests on the island resort of Phuket and Ratchaburi west of the capital.
Bangkok protestor Chantana Srivarapongs said news of the rallies spread through Facebook in particular, but also via other media, including television. The movement’s spontaneity credentials – a cherished attribute of other masked protests elsewhere in the world, particularly Occupy – have been further fueled by a reported lack of hierarchy.
“We are protesting together in silence and in a peaceful way. There are no leaders – that’s amazing, unbelievable,” said Chantana. To prove it, she noted how she had climbed a walkway up to a nearby Bangkok Skytrain station to greet the crowd: “I said to everyone: ‘Just get out. Thaksin, just get out.’”
Popularized on Wall Street and outside the London Stock Exchange in 2011, the rebellious symbolism of the white mask has since been used in a hodge-podge of protests across the globe. In January last year, Polish opponents of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement wore them. In February, the Bahrain government banned the masks fearing the latest installment of the Arab Spring, following the example of the United Arab Emirates a few months earlier.
In Thailand, the mask has been seen before in politics, despite numerous media reports to the contrary. On November 25, 2011, a small Bangkok gathering of groups opposing the then six month-old Yingluck government included little-known Siam Samakki (United Siam), which introduced its new “Anonymous Thailand” Facebook page the same evening, its members’ faces hidden behind white masks.
Although the recent, growing street movement appears not to be organized, so far there is every indication that beneath the mask this latest Thai political movement represents a familiar order.
Samran Viroj is the self-identified group leader, and formerly a core member of the People’s Alliance for Democracy, formed in early 2006 to oppose the former Thaksin administration in the name of the monarchy.
Meanwhile, former chief of the royal court police, Gen Vasit Dejkunjorn, and former senator Kaewsan Atibhodi will together launch an online “Thai Spring Forum” for anti-government voices, in an attempt to fuel momentum behind the mask rallies.
“The impact of our group will depend on the government’s actions. We want to create this cyber-campaign first just to be an electric charge and wait for the magnet to attract more people,” Kaewsan told The Nation newspaper.
General criticism of the government has certainly grown in recent weeks as Yingluck nears the half-way point of her four-year term. Thailand’s rice-pledging scheme, a key part of her party’s election campaign in 2011 and designed to guarantee elevated prices for farmers, has suffered growing accusations of corruption amid opaque state contracts, a 35-percent decline in exports last year and concerns that it will take up to three years to clear growing stockpiles of rice left sitting in warehouses across the country. In recent weeks the government has come under rising pressure to reveal the true cost of the scheme. Recent estimates – denied but not corrected by the Commerce Ministry – suggest a bill of more than 300 billion baht ($10 billion) for Thai tax payers.
A controversial 350 billion baht water scheme and its associated environmental and corruption concerns has proven similarly damaging for the government.
Thanet Aphornsuvan, a political historian and dean of the Pridi Banomyong International College at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, says that an administration under pressure may not necessarily translate into momentum behind the mask campaign, however.
“The people in the middle, the so-called silent majority … are disappointed [with the mask campaign],” says Thanet. “I don’t think it’s significant because they don’t have anything new at all. There’s no alternative. It’s just the same: Get rid of Thaksin.” This recent movement is little more than a reincarnation of the monarchist Yellow Shirts (a group which has all but died in the past year or so), he says, joined by a few hundred dissatisfied converts to their anti-Shinawatra cause.
The mask movement also suffers from confused political symbolism, says Pavin Chachavalpongpun, an associate professor at the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at Kyoto University.
While the white-mask Occupy and Anonymous movements were typified by unstructured, Communist-driven anarchic sympathies targeted at institutions of power and money, Thailand’s version is using the same symbolism in the name of the upper classes to defend the monarchy, he says.
“All of these things [together] are just so absurd,” says Pavin. “How can we have Communism and these people holding a portrait of the king and queen?” Although the government should not underestimate the movement, compared to its opposing number the pro-Shinawatra Red Shirts, it remains woefully inferior, he adds.
The Shinawatras between them have won every Thai election since Thaksin entered politics in 1998, their rule in government punctuated only by the 2006 coup and subsequent premiership of opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva, who rose to power on a parliamentary vote in late 2008.
In May 2010, hundreds of thousands of Red Shirts occupied the commercial district of Bangkok, prompting a military crackdown ordered by Abhisit who faces charges stemming from the killings that resulted. Shinawatra critics argue that these are mostly designed to level the legal playing field with Thaksin – who himself faces two years in prison should he return – in a bid to secure a political amnesty that has been touted almost from the moment Yingluck took power.
Jakrapob Penkair, a spokesman for the then Thaksin administration and a key organizer of the Red Shirt movement, sees the recent anti-Shinawatra protests as the latest stage of the ongoing battle for political control, “whether these small groups know it or not.”
Living in exile in Phnom Penh following accusations of lèse majesté, a charge which typically incurs a prison term of at least 10 years, Jakrapob says that Thai politics remains a waiting game for the time being.
Thaksin is still in exile. His sister stands accused of attempting to smooth his return by amending the constitution drawn up following his ouster. Meanwhile ailing 85-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej has entered his 67th year on the throne with the monarchy ever-present at the summit of Thailand’s power structure.
“The mask is just a part of it,” says Jakrapob. “It’s just part of the big game plan, a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.”
Steve Finch is a freelance journalist based in Bangkok.
Thailand’s Immigration Police have detained approximately 26,000 illegal migrant workers from Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia during an eight-day operation in Bangkok and surrounding regions, according to a Royal Thai Police spokesperson.
Mr Adisorn Keudmeuangkhon of the Bangkok-based Migrant Working Group said the drive was in response to an increasing number of concerns about an influx of illegal migrant labor.
“Some Thai people see that many illegal workers are competing for their job positions in the past few months,” he told me. “That’s why the ministry has to take tougher action.”
Civil strife in Myanmar and the recent implementation of a military conscription have driven thousands of Burmese into Thailand, while severe inflation and limited job opportunities in Laos have also encouraged an influx of workers from that country.
Between June 5 and 12, officials detained and checked 20,111 Myanmar laborers, 1,659 Laotian migrant workers, and 3,971 Cambodian workers, according to the Ministry of Labor.
It marked the start of a 120-day campaign to audit workplaces and arrest unlawful migrant workers, according to the government.
Migrant Workers to be Deported
According to Keudmeuangkhon, undocumented workers face fines ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 Thai baht (US $136 to $1,365), deportation, and a two-year prohibition on re-entering Thailand.
Authorities did not intend to file criminal charges, he claimed.
Authorities raided 1,774 workplaces, according to Moe Gyo, chairman of the Joint Action Committee on Burmese Affairs, which advocates for Myanmar labor rights.
He stated that since the military junta activated conscription, there has been an upsurge in the number of arrests of Myanmar citizens in Thailand who do not have a work permit identity card.
All men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 must serve in the military for at least two years. The first group of 5,000 conscripts summoned by Myanmar’s junta will start duty at the end of this month, military sources told AFP on Monday.
According to Keudmeuangkhon, the bulk of Lao migrant workers in Thailand work as fresh market shopkeepers, restaurant servers, and mall salespeople.
Most people visit Thailand as part of ASEAN’s visa-free policy for tourists, but they stay longer than the 30-day restriction once they find job.
“Employers like to hire Lao migrant workers in the service sector because they can speak fluent Thai,” he told me.
Immigration Police Detain Illegal Migrant Workers
The Thai Cabinet may approve an enhanced program for Thai employers to register their unauthorized foreign workers in July or August. Keudmeuangkhon explained.
Last month, the Thai Ministry of Labor’s Foreign Workers Administration office announced that 268,465 Lao migrant workers were officially working in Thailand.
Baykham Kattiya, Lao Minister of Labor, told Radio Free Asia earlier this month that there are 415,956 migrant workers in other nations, the majority of whom work in Thailand.
According to her, the Lao government believes that over 203,000 persons working outside of the nation lack proper work documents.
However, a Lao official familiar with the labor industry informed Radio Free Asia, a BenarNews-affiliated news station, on June 20 that the number of illegal Lao migrant workers in Thailand and abroad is likely significantly greater.
“They go to other countries as illegal migrant workers through different types of methods – as tourists or students,” said the politician. “Thus, it is hard for the immigration police to collect data on these people.”
Government Officials Responsible for Smuggling in Migrant Workers
Government Officials Responsible for Smuggling in Migrant Workers
Thailand’s Office of Basic Education Commission has initiated an investigation into the electrocution of a 14-year-old student by a water dispenser in a high school. The event happened at noon on Friday, during the high school’s sports day. The victim was a Grade 8 student.
According to local media in Trang Province, the incident occurred when a teacher instructed the pupil to turn off a water dispenser amid a heavy rain.
According to a witness, the child collapsed while strolling with his friend near a water station. The friend claimed he attempted to assist but was also shocked by electricity.
According to reports, the friend then recovered, left the site, and requested assistance from teachers. A teacher ran to the scene and used a towel to pull the boy away by the ankle. He was taken to the hospital, but it was too late, they claimed.
The event sparked criticism from parents and netizens over school safety, as well as the slow response to aid the young youngster.
Mr. Chainarong Changrua, head of Trang-Krabi’s Secondary Educational Service Area Office, told local media on Sunday that forensic officers from Trang Provincial Police had visited the area. They discovered the blown breaker switch behind the water dispenser, he explained.
The breaker was burned out, thus the authorities assumed the disaster was caused by a short circuit that allowed energy to spill to a neighboring power pole. The student also appeared wet and was not wearing shoes when electrocuted.
According to the Office of Basic Education Commission, a probe team will complete its investigation this week.
The student’s father, Mr Pornchai Thepsuwan, 53, claimed he was saddened when he saw his son’s body. The boy (Wayu), was the youngest of two boys, he explained. He stated that following the tragedy, the school director and staff gave financial assistance to the families.
Mr Pornchai also said he would not seek charges against the institution because he believed it was an accident.
Electrical accidents in Thailand
Electrocution instances in Thailand have increased alarmingly in recent years. Many mishaps occur as a result of improper wiring and inadequate maintenance of electrical systems.
Public locations, such as schools and markets, frequently lack adequate safety precautions, putting individuals in danger. In rural areas, antiquated infrastructure exacerbates the situation, resulting in more frequent and serious events.
Although several high-profile cases have brought these challenges to light, genuine progress has been gradual. Furthermore, the rainy season heightens the likelihood of electrical accidents, as water and exposed wires do not mix well.
The government has made steps to strengthen safety standards, but enforcement is patchy. More education on electrical safety could help to reduce these accidents.
Unfortunately, better infrastructure and tougher rules may have prevented many of these incidents. The loss and injuries caused by electrocution are avoidable, emphasizing the need for immediate action.
Over 200 High School Students Facing Sedition Charges in Thailand
Over 200 High School Students Facing Sedition Charges in Thailand
Thailand’s Tourist Police said it is collaborating with embassies from five countries to combat tourist scams and ten criminal gangs in Pattaya. The Tourist Police Bureau, convened a meeting on Thursday Pol Lt Gen Saksira Phuek-am told a press briefing.
Pol Lt Gen Saksira Phuek-am, the Tourist Police bureau commissioner said the participants included ambassadors from South Korea, Ukraine, Russia, India, and Switzerland.
He told the briefing the he had ordered a crackdown on tourist frauds, such as fraudulent or low-quality tour operators and unfair sales of goods and services. Stepped-up operations began on June 19 and will continue until June 25.
He stated that the agency was working with numerous organisations to increase tourists’ confidence in visiting Pattaya.
Gen Saksira spent time on the famed Walking Street speaking with officers on duty and assigned them to seek for members of ten criminal groups known to operate in Pattaya.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin will visit Chon Buri on Saturday to assess the tourism situation. He intends to visit the site of a future Formula One racecourse near Khao Phra Tamnak in Bang Lamung District.
Prime Minister Srettha recently met with Formula One organisers in Italy to examine the potential of including Thailand on the race schedule in the future.
On Sunday, the Prime Minister will pay a visit to Rayong’s U-tapao airport to discuss development on the airport’s land, with the goal of encouraging investment in the Eastern Economic Corridor.
Police Chief Reinstated
In other police news, Pol Gen Torsak Sukvimol has been reinstated as national police chief following the conclusion of an investigation into a highly publicised quarrel, according to Wissanu Krea-ngam, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin’s counsellor.
Mr Wissanu released the investigation’s findings on Thursday, after the prime minister formed a fact-finding committee chaired by Chatchai Promlert to investigate into the quarrel between Pol Gen Torsak and his deputy, Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn.
The four-month study revealed conflicts and disorder at all levels of the Royal Thai Police, but it was unclear whether these issues arose from a single cause or several causes, according to Mr Wissanu.
The findings revealed that both Pol Gen Torsak and Pol Gen Surachate were involved, with each team contributing to the tensions, he noted.
Mr Wissanu indicated that Pol Gen Surachate was reinstated as deputy national police head on 18 April following his relocation to the Prime Minister’s Office on 20 March. A disciplinary committee was formed to investigate Pol Gen Surachate, and he was ordered temporarily suspended from the police force.
Because there were no further difficulties to explore, it was decided to restore Pol Gen Torsak. He plans to retire on September 30.
On March 20, Mr Srettha abruptly transferred both top police officers to the Prime Minister’s Office in an effort to address the growing schism within the police service.
Kitrat Panphet, Deputy National Police Chief, was subsequently named Acting Police Chief. According to sources, Pol Gen Surachate could face money laundering charges related to online gaming networks.
Source: Bangkok Post
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