Obstacles Facing Thai Reconciliation

[gobbledonk]

So are these Chinese-Thai families Asia's equivalent of the jews, maligned by everybody and considered by paranoid minds and neo-nazis to be the power behind the scenes, when in fact such beliefs are hate speech and delusional?

 

Whatever - I have ethnic Chinese friends in both Singapore and Indonesia, have dated several Chinese women and have no axe to grind here. Its well known that the Chinese are disliked, and often attacked, by local populations throughout SE Asia and the Pacific - that doesnt make them any less successful, but the people I am talking about arent your average merchants. If I've demonised all Chinese Thais with that post, I apologise to those who are simply trying to make a living.

[Central Scrutinizer]

That poster you quote doesn't name names and he's Thai.

 

Seems to be a farang.

 

"My wife is a Yellow shirt, her father a Red, I am ‘piggy in the middle’, who just wants to live in peace. I am glad I cannot vote, wait maybe they will give me a few Baht."

 

Cent

[chuckwoww]

Right. I missed that. He should ask his wife who the amataya are... or maybe her father knows.

[dave32]

Right. I missed that. He should ask his wife who the amataya are... or maybe her father knows.

 

Yep, Cent got it before I saw your reply. Farang. I cited it as opinion piece in a forum. Not an illumination of detached objectivity or in-depth details. Just liked it.

 

BTW - Amataya. Even I know what that is. Did you know it's an adaptation of the communist concept of aristocracy, bourgeois, whatever you want to call it?

 

Makes me think of Cambodia. Ahh, to mimic their history, wouldn't that be a wonderful resolution.

 

*sigh*

 

 

[LizardKing]

Having done much research, almost obsessively, into Cambodia in the 1970s, I say again that this whole red shirt thing is far, far more similar to the buildup to the Khmer Rouge Year Zero than not. Just listen to the speeches, look at the actions of the red leaders. Sure, some good people not thinking that way may be caught up in it, but that's always the case isn't it?

 

Refer also to the Jakarta religious riots of a few years back. You can see how quickly things can radically spiral out of control, even in this day and age. It is not really any different now than then.

 

That's what scares me.

[ThaiHome]

I think Venezuela might be a more recent model…with Zimbabwe the end of that road.

TH

[chuckwoww]

BTW - Amataya. Even I know what that is. Did you know it's an adaptation of the communist concept of aristocracy, bourgeois, whatever you want to call it?

 

Makes me think of Cambodia. Ahh, to mimic their history, wouldn't that be a wonderful resolution.

 

 

I think you'll find 'amataya' is from Sanskrit and it means or meant something like court officials or royal advisers. I can't be more specific. That's the perception among the Reds about who the real power brokers are. You seem to be suggesting that no such group exists or if it does it is progressive and enlightened.

 

[cheekyboy]

When Dissent Is Criminalized

 

When Dissent Is Criminalized

Thailand's Red Shirts have done nothing more than express their opposition to the ruling party. For this they have been labelled terrorists....

 

Over the past two months, Thailand’s Abhisit regime has opened fire with live ammunition on the Red Shirt pro-democracy demonstration in Bangkok, killing at least 88 of its own citizens and injuring more than 1,800, including foreign journalists and onlookers. In a desperate bid to escape international condemnation for these unlawful killings, Abhisit is trying to paint the demonstrators as terrorists and enemies of the state.

 

Many around the world are not fooled. Writing in the Financial Times, David Piling said, “Attempts to portray the tens of thousands of mainly poor Thais who took to Bangkok’s streets as ‘terrorists’ or paid mercenaries of [former Prime Minister] Mr. Thaksin simply do not wash.â€Â

 

The world saw for itself that the vast majority of pro-democracy demonstrators were peaceful men and women of all ages camped around the central stage area, while those fighting at the barricades were mostly armed with primitive weapons. Journalists around the world have been firm in setting the record straight, noting the lopsided nature of the clash. “The Red Shirts were massively outgunned,†reported Bill Schiller in the Toronto Star, noting that most of what was seen were slingshots, fireworks, Molotov cocktails, rocks, and a few small arms.

 

However that doesn’t mean the government still isn’t pushing hard to sell the terrorist narrative as a justification for possible human rights abuses. This past weekend diplomatic delegations were dispatched to key allies bearing photographs and slick multimedia presentations of an alleged arms cache that they claimed to have discovered days after clearing out the protest camp – a time during which no third parties were allowed to enter this zone to confirm the discovery. They’ve also issued a warrant for the arrest on terrorism allegations of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whom they claim is the mastermind of the Red Shirts (disclosure: I represent Mr. Shinawatra as legal counsel).

 

Many factors undermine the Abhisit regime’s terrorism claims: the government has consistently resisted international mediation requests from the protestors, which would in theory corroborate such claims; they have obstructed the work of journalists (one correspondent for the Times of London was detained at his hotel, while many others were seemingly targeted during the siege, including two seriously wounded Canadians – Nelson Rand and Chandler Vandergrift); they’ve shut down hundreds of websites and media sympathetic to the Red Shirts while launching charges against student leaders and academics associated with the movement; and lastly, no one is able to explain how so many local and foreign correspondents inside the Red Shirt camps for weeks failed to record the presence of serious war weapons.

 

Some observers point to the parallels between this attack on the Red Shirts and the massacre of 46 student protestors at Thammasat University in 1976. As happened then, the government is portraying the protesters as evil criminals and enemies of the state, while their control over the media allows for the stirring up of hate and public tolerance for violence against fellow Thais. In the aftermath of Thammasat, it was later discovered that the Thai military had planted a big weapons cache on the students after the fact to justify their actions.

 

The criminalization of Red Shirt protestors as terrorists is even more dangerous than a simple excuse for violence – it is a focused measure aimed at reducing their basic rights to defence, attorneys, and trials. Of the more than 40 protest leaders who have been arrested, the government has refused to disclose their location of detention, the charges against them, or their health status. The government has declared a state of emergency since April 7, allowing them to arrest whomever they choose without charges and hold them in non-conventional facilities – which raises concerns, alluded to by Human Rights Watch, over possible torture or mistreatment. The authorities say that thousands of Red Shirts have been provided with transportation back to their homes, but so far no one has been able to verify who was taken where.

 

These accusations of terrorism against the protesters have been made easier by the existence of real crimes on the fringes of the demonstration. The so-called “Black Shirts,†who have no relation to the peaceful spirit and stated principles of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), have likely been involved in illegal activity and should be arrested and prosecuted before a court for their crimes. Those responsible for the terrible acts of arson that affected more than 20 buildings in Bangkok, including massive damage to the Central World shopping mall, must be investigated and prosecuted for their crimes.

 

But these isolated activities on the lawless fringes represent the outrage and frustration of misled individuals, and have nothing to do with the non-violent political change espoused by the UDD, much less any conventional definition of terrorism.

 

There is also a perception on behalf of the Red Shirts that the legal system is unfairly biased against them. When activists of the pro-government People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) illegally occupied and shut down Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport in 2008, not one of these protestors was ever investigated, charged, prosecuted, or jailed for this crime, and in fact the current foreign minister was personally involved.

 

The conduct of the Thai authorities is not that of a victim of terrorism, but rather the behavior of someone who has something to hide. The invention of new crimes to cover up older ones is not acceptable in the contemporary context of international law, and this crass manipulation must be openly discouraged by outside parties. The Red Shirts risked their lives and suffered considerable casualties because their democratic choices and popular will had been repeatedly disqualified and stolen. Until that central grievance is addressed, all other accusations are only distractions.

 

The international community must ask Thailand to uphold the rule of law and basic procedural rights for citizens who have done nothing more than express their opposition to the ruling party. At a minimum, the Abhisit government has a duty to disclose the location of the prison camps and the conditions for the detained protesters, confirm their access to legal counsel and the basis of the charges against them, and grant access to international human rights monitors to ensure fair treatment of the detained Red Shirt leaders.

 

Robert Amsterdam is international lawyer to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and advisor to the human rights defence team of the UDD.

[Bar4]

So are these Chinese-Thai families Asia's equivalent of the jews,

 

You are not the first to ask this question:

 

Are Thailand's Chinese the Jewish of the east?

Posted by redandwhitestripes , Reader : 1041 , 21:30:32

Print

 

Obviously, with a wife and son with Chinese blood, the post is meant to be provocative rather than offensive. I use the term "Jewish" rather than "Jew" because the latter can be considered anti-Semitic.

 

It cannot escape notice that nearly all the key business and political offices in Thailand belong to those of recent (as opposed to the theory that all Thais are Chinese descendents). Chinese descent. As far as I can see, at least four of the last six PM's have been Chinese, along with most of their cabinet. Whenever read the business pages, the CEIO profiles nearly always feature a smiling Chinese person.

 

This trend continues downwards. My last school was a government school. A disproportionate number of my best students were Chinese. My current employer is an expensive private school. The majority of students are ethnic Chinese.

 

There was a time when ethnic Chinese were looked upo with disdain by the upper class. Those days are gone. It seems the Chinese are the upper class.

 

Why is this? And what do ethnic Thais think or feel about it? I asked my wife why this is so and she told me simply: "Chinese people work hard." short answer, but quite possibly the whole truth?

 

 

 

In the west, the Jewish community are considered to hold a number of key business and political posts which increase the lobbying power of the Jewish community. There are some conspiracy theories concerning the Jewish groups but most people acknowledge those theories as abhorrent, which they are. (Some sections of the Jewish lobby are also unpleasant and often undemocratic but that's a different blog). After all, every ethnic group seeks to wield as much power as possible. That's just natural. I know a few Jewish people and they are friendly, everyday people like the rest of us.

 

http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/reallifethailand/2008/12/09/entry-2

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

[Nervous God]

Looking at S E Asia, the Chinese where hard working, had a strong education slant, and in all the countries, bar none, rose to the top because of that.

 

The problem is when they try and entrench it.

 

One company I worked with would only hire Chinese Thai, the rules that allowed the Chinese to enter Thailand where quickly changed by the Chinese Thai leaders to make sure that other's couldn't take advantage of what a basket of fruit Thailand is.

 

I think the Chinese ethics are good ethics, it's when they people in power intentionally try to maintain their power base using unfair rules, laws regulations and frankly neglect, that it is wrong.

 

The Chinese Thais saw what happened in Malaysia, ( where my Former Father in Law ran for his life to Australia,)Indonesia Singapore Vietnam Laos Etc and didn't want it to happen in Thailand.

 

They rose to the top due to good ethecs, they stay their because of bad ones.