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LEE SUSTAR – WHAT IS the level of repression in
Thailand?

GILES JI UNGPAKORN – WE HAVE curfews in a number of areas.
I’m not sure if they actually declared
martial law. But for some days now they
have areas that were free-fire zones. But
since the demonstrations ended under
such pressure, people have been setting
fire to buildings in many places in
Bangkok and the provinces and so on.
They have been very carefully targeted,
really. There have been government build-
ings, provincial headquarters in the north
and the northeast provinces. They set fire
to the stock exchange, luxury shopping
malls, and so on. The death toll is now
eighty-plus since April 10. But I’m sure
they haven’t accounted for all of those
killed. Soldiers have the tendency to drag
bodies away and try to hide them.

WAS THE government’s offer of early
elections sincere?

I THINK it was a ploy to give themselves
some breathing space. They weren’t really
sincere about coming to a compromise.
At the same time as they offered elections, they still had charges of terrorism
and of trying to overthrow the monarchy
leveled at the Red Shirt leaders.

The relatives of those killed on April
10 had pressed charges against the prime
minister and deputy prime minister for
murder. The government side was brushing aside those charges. This was quite
significant, because in the last two years,
there has been a complete double standard in the use of the law.

Demonstrators have closed down airports—the Yellow Shirt fascists did that
in 2008 [when they functioned as a
street force that helped the military oust
a democratically elected government].
None of the Yellow Shirts have been
punished at all. But now, there are lots of
Red Shirts in jail.

YOU’VE DESCRIBED the Red Shirts as
a class movement rooted in the
countryside. Can you tell us how the
movement evolved during the
demonstrations?

THE MOVEMENT was started off by
the leaders from the old party of Thaksin
Shinawatra [the prime minister who was
ousted in a 2006 military coup].

They had a TV program called Truth
Today. Later, the program got banned
from mainstream TV, so they decided to
try to have a TV program in a football
stadium, and about 100,000 people
turned up. It really grew from there. People went back to their communities and
to Bangkok as well, and started to build
connections and organization.

These groups help each other. They
raise money for traveling to protests.
They have ways that some people can access the Internet and get through the
censorship through various computer
programs. They spread the news that
way. In many cases, they run community
radio stations.

It’s a very grassroots movement. As
Marxists, we can understand that things
can be contradictory. The Red Shirts can
be very supportive of Thaksin because he
provided health care to the entire popu-
lation and pursued pro-poor policies.
But at the same time, they are not
being manipulated and used by him.
They have genuine grievances. Their
democratic rights have been stolen, and
this is very much related to class issues.

Because the people who stole their democratic rights have insulted ordinary people, saying that they’re not fit to vote—
that they’re too stupid, too poor and un-
educated. Democratic rights went hand-
in-hand with the benefits they got from
the elected governments. The struggles
for democracy and class social justice are
completely tied up.

In the beginning of March, the Red
Shirt leadership started to use the language of class struggle. They said that
they were all serfs. Lots of people made
numerous speeches saying that they were
the ordinary people, fighting against the
entrenched elite, the rich, people who
are bloodsuckers and so on.

Because of all the bloodshed and bru-
tality, and the fact that the king has re-
mained completely silent, and the queen
has supported the Yellow Shirts, it is
quite likely that the vast majority of the
Red Shirts now completely hate the
monarchy. That is many millions of people. It’s a new phenomenon.

WHAT WILL become of the
movement now?

QUITE A few of the high-profile leaders
are in prison. And the authorities are trying to capture some of the lower-profile
ones. Also, they’re going for provincial
leaders and so on. The movement will
have to throw up new leadership. If it is
to remain strong, the way it was built in
communities has to be strengthened.

And the groups have to coordinate with
each other. If it is to be strong, that leadership has to represent the different communities. That’s something I’ve been arguing for. But whether or not that will
happen is another matter.

WHAT ARE the links between the Red
Shirt movement and the left and trade
unions?

THE EXISTING left is really small, and
those who were serious about building a
left-wing movement formed a united
front and became Red Shirts. There were
some who want to remain pure and
didn’t engage in the struggle, but in my
opinion, they are quite irrelevant.

Trade union activists were on the Red
Shirt protests. But they didn’t come in
union contingents. They didn’t call for
strikes. There was discussion toward the
end about the possibility of strike action,
but it never happened.

The bus workers’ unions did come on
stage during the protests and gave dona-
tions. The local electricity distribution
workers came on stage. There were areas
in Bangkok where roadblocks were set
up by Red Shirts—places where there are
factories. So there’s potential there. But
the Red Shirt leadership, because they’re
not from the left—and they’re not used
to the kind of activism the left would
do—ignored this.

YOU WROTE over the past few
months about some of the NGOs that
were blaming the Red Shirts equally
with the government for the violence.

AT THE beginning, some would say that
this was a dispute between Thaksin and
the conservative elite. They didn’t understand the dynamics of the Red Shirt
movement, and therefore they remained
aloof. Later, they became semi-sympathetic, but still wouldn’t go in with the
Red Shirts, so they remained irrelevant.
But the NGO movement had already
disgraced itself during the military coup
of 2006. They supported the coup. They
supported the Yellow Shirt fascists.

When they talked about the need to
avoid bloodshed in recent weeks and
months, they were saying that both sides
need to avoid it. But on the one side, we
have a heavily armed repressive state,
using tanks and armed troops against
unarmed, peaceful demonstrators. And
they’re still saying that both sides need to
take responsibility?

THIS ISN’T the first time that troops
have cracked down on demonstrators
in Thai history. What’s distinctive
about this period?

WHAT’S HISTORIC is the Red Shirt
movement—that it’s so large, and made
up of ordinary workers and small farmers. It’s a mass movement that has been
mobilized and active since late 2008,
and it’s growing. Also, the protests were
prolonged, and so was the bloodshed. I
think the body count was also unprecedented as well.

THE OFFICIAL spin in the media about
the 2006 coup against Thaksin was
that it was a “relief” for Thailand.

IT WAS a relief for the middle class, the
right wing, and the NGO types who
were reactionary. It was a shock and horror to millions of Thai people who voted
for the government. The journalists who
talk about it being a relief were only talking to the middle class.

The middle class throughout this event
took a very reactionary position—anti-
democratic and sometimes semi-fascist—
in the same way that the middle class
took an extremely reactionary position in
the military coup of 1976. But there have
been other cases where the middle class
has gone along with the democracy
movement. It vacillates all the time.

WHAT HAS changed in the social
base of the regime?

IF YOU look at 1970s, when the Communist Party (CP) was strong, there were
serious splits in Thai society, and the
monarchy was not that popular. I think
the monarchy reached its pinnacle in
terms of gaining hegemony when the CP
was crushed in the mid-1980s.

This crisis has its roots in the 1997 economic crisis, when the Thai economy collapsed and a lot of Asian economies went
with it. The response of the ruling class to
the crisis of 1997 was to make the poor
pay for it. It didn’t provide anything to the
poor. People who became unemployed
were told to go back to their villages.

Along came Thaksin Shinawatra, a
fairly modernist capitalist, if you like. He
saw that if Thailand was to become com-
petitive in the world market and climb
out of the crisis, he had to bring the majority of the population on board and
make them what he called stakeholders.
He saw that if there were a decent health
care system, education and all that, the
capitalist system would be more efficient.

But this really rocked the boat. Because
it meant that the old ways in which the
elite had ruled—by offering the poor vir-
tually nothing—could no longer be used.
Plus, Thaksin became immensely popular.

The Thai ruling elite has traditionally
used the monarchy to legitimize everything it does. So if the army stages a coup,
it claims legitimacy from the monarchy,
and the monarchy is happy to go along
with this. The monarchy itself is quite
weak, but it’s given the appearance of
strength. It’s used in an ideological way to
back up everything the elites do, includ-
ing the 2006 military coup against
Thaksin.

Because of the coup, the use of the
monarchy, and the way that the monarchy has been seen to be on the side of
the military and the conservative elite,
there’s now a deep crisis once again, like
there was in the 1970s and the 1930s.
The popularity of the monarchy has
gone up and down. What we see now in
Thailand is the division between the two
sides: a conservative elite that uses brute
force, allows democracy at certain times,
and uses the monarchy to legitimize itself—versus Thaksin, who uses pro-poor
policies to gain a mass base through
democratic means.

Between those two choices, the people
have chosen democracy. That means in
trying to struggle for democracy after the
coup, they have come up against the ideology of the monarchy that is being used
against them. That is bringing the
monarchy into crisis.

WHAT IS the potential to organize
openly now?

THE CENSORSHIP is very severe at the
moment. People are still playing cat-and-
mouse games—opening new Web sites,
having them closed down, and moving
them.

WHAT KIND of factor will the
economy be in the months ahead?

REGIMES CAN benefit if they can cling
to power and the economy starts to grow.
But it’s much too early to say, since we
still have the world economic crisis—although the expansion of the economy in
China is probably helping the Thai econ-
omy. On the other hand, the social un-
rest will have a negative effect. It’s diffi-
cult to tell.

ARE THERE splits in the ruling class
that could give the popular movement
room to come back?

THEY WANTED to delay the elections
so that the Red Shirts would demobilize.
They were trying to buy time, and maybe
hope that the longer they postpone elections, the more they could find ways to
boost their popularity. But the killings
must have had an impact on the way people view the government.

There are splits in the ruling elite all
the time. But they are still united in their
opposition to the Red Shirts. They have
a relationship with the movements from
below. If you have a lot of pressure from
below, certain elements in the ruling
class will say, “Right, we’re going to sacrifice the prime minister to save our own
skins.” But if the Red Shirts don’t mobi-
lize, I’m not sure we can rely on splits in
the ruling class.

WHAT CAN people outside Thailand
do to support the pro-democracy
movement?

ONE ISSUE that’s very important is
that of political prisoners. That’s something people in the U.S. and Europe can
help campaign around.

It is very important to see that all the
prisoners are political prisoners, whatever the charges that they may face.
Some may face charges of terrorism or
trying to overthrow the monarchy, some
of blocking roads. But all of these things
have to be seen as political charges, and
they all need to be opposed. We need to
pressure human rights groups, the
Obama administration, and other gov-
ernments.

GILES JI UNGPAKORN

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