Thailand has experienced a dramatic new episode in its contemporary history. Since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932, many popular revolts have attempted to overthrow corrupt and authoritarian regimes. In 1973, 1976, 1992 and now 2010, ruling elites responded to popular aspirations to democracy and social justice with violence, repression, and class hatred.
The political events of recent weeks have their origin in the military coup of September 19, 2006, which ended nearly 6 years of parliamentary democracy, the longest democratic period that Thailand has ever known. The military organized this coup d’etat to overthrow Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire businessman who became Prime Minister in 2001. During his first term, this corrupt and authoritarian figure implemented a populist policy whose social aspects earned him an immense popularity. This enabled him to be the only Thai prime minister to win a second consecutive term in 2005 in an election marked by historical high levels of participation.
When he was Prime Minister, Thaksin upset the traditional balance of power, challenging the prerogatives of the army, the monarchy and a few large industrial families. For these traditional elites, who concentrated political power and money in their hands for over 70 years, the people were deemed uncultivated and unfit to democracy. They should remain subjected and excluded from political life. To better enslave them, the establishment has invented a fable about “Asian values” as opposed to “Western values” and vaunts the primacy of the group over the individual and the acceptance of hierarchy. In fact, this is the ideological justification for a highly inequitable system and deeply anti-democratic laws allowing a privileged few to enrich themselves and stay in power.
The 2006 coup opened a new period of political instability that continues today. The establishment has done everything to reduce the influence of Thaksin in political life, in vain. He was unable to regain power with the highest judicial court, an institution which has become highly politicised since the 2006 military coup, overthrowing two new “pro-Thaksin” governments in September and December 2008. Since then, Thailand has been led by the main leader of the Democrat Party, Abhisit Vejjajiva. The traditional Democrat Party, allied to the establishment, has not won an election for nearly 15 years. Abhisit, educated at Oxford, is the perfect representative of the rich and the possessing classes. He was put in power in December 2008 through a reversal of parliamentary alliances organized by the military.
This government has not been elected democratically! It is at the service of the military and the monarchy.
The claims against this government by the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), better known as the Red Shirt movement, are legitimate.
This political and social movement was initially formed by the union of defenders of Thaksin and democratic forces which emerged after the coup. This alliance was able to mobilize a popular base consisting mainly of farmers, villagers and urban workers, especially in the north and northeast of the country. The Red Shirts demonstrated peacefully for almost two and a half months to demand the resignation of Abhisit and the holding of early parliamentary elections.
This movement has shown that Thailand is not “the land of the smile”, still less a “tropical paradise”" for the majority of its inhabitants. Despite strong economic growth and a real modernisation of the country, inequalities have increased, making Thailand one of the most unequal countries in the world. The narrow-mindedness of the ruling elites make them very poor leaders whose only political vision for their country is their own enrichment, rejecting any redistribution of the fruits of growth.
The Thai people are tired of the double standards of justice, the lack of democracy and continuing deep inequalities.
The vast majority of Thais are regarded as second-class citizens whose vote is not even recognized as the governments that they elect are dissolved by the Bangkok establishment. The Red Shirt movement is a revolt of the have-nots against the established order. Fractures and divisions in society opened up by this new conflict are not ready to close. In this country where it is still prohibited to declare oneself as republican or communist, this movement has liberated political speech and this makes its current confiscation still more illegitimate.
To stay in power, the Abhisit Government has chosen to govern through a state of emergency, the crime of infringing lèse majesté and increasing authoritarianism. It employs methods worthy of a dictatorship: maintaining emergency laws and the state of emergency which gives full powers to the Prime Minister; a witch hunt against political opponents it characterises as “terrorists"; calls for denunciation of Red Shirts on the run; arbitrary imprisonment without charge of opponents; censorship of all media and blogs deemed to be anti government (more than 50,000 to this day!); use of the mass media to drown the people with its propaganda.
No democracy can be built on violence and repression!
· The Abhisit Government must agree to submit to the verdict of the ballot box. It must dissolve the National Assembly and convene parliamentary elections as soon as possible.
· The government should abolish the crime of lèse majesté which allows it to stifle any alternative discourse. Recent events have shown, if it were needed, that the figure of the King is not a solution to the country’s political problems but a means used by the ruling elites to maintain their stranglehold on democratic freedoms. Democracy will not emerge in Thailand so long as there is recourse to the “extra constitutional figure of the king" to deny the political choice of the majority.
· The state of emergency must be lifted and the Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation (CRES) dissolved.
· Repression must cease immediately. It is unworthy of a government that claims to be democratic to pursue its political opponents, accusing them of terrorism, which in Thailand is punishable by the death penalty. All political prisoners must be released and the government and the army must stop the witch-hunt they have started.
· Censorship must immediately cease and all newspapers, televisions, radios and blogs that have been banned must again appear and express themselves.
Decades of political repression have weakened unimaginably the movements of workers and peasants. A number of leaders of the old workers’ parties, whether social democratic or Maoist-inclined Communist, trade unions or peasant associations have been assassinated by the different dictatorial regimes. That is why political opposition takes the unexpected form of the Red Shirts: a political movement which is neither a party nor an association, heterogeneous and marked by contradictions but whose essence is its organic link with the people. We should hail the courage of these tens of thousands of workers and peasants who occupied the commercial and business centres of Bangkok for many weeks and who experienced the assaults of the army.
We will not let the Red Shirts stand alone against the illegitimate Abhisit Government and military. We shall support them against the repression to which they are subjected. We will help them to build a new, stronger and even more determined movement against the despots who have usurped power.
The Thai regime can continue its policy of repression all the more freely since it has the support of Western Governments and that solidarity actions remain far too limited. We call on progressive and democratic organisations in the greatest number of countries possible to demand an end to the repression and respect for fundamental liberties in Thailand and to begin an international campaign for the release of prisoners, an end to intimidation and the lifting of charges against the Red Shirts.