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Bangkok Dispatch: not far from Thailand's tourist beaches, Muslims and Buddhists are locked in a struggle in which thousands have died. David Eimer reports.
The young father walked slowly down the road, his face expressionless, as a light rain fell. In his arms he held the lifeless body of his 11-month-old daughter, killed just hours before when the tea shop in his village was sprayed with automatic gunfire that left six people dead.
Mr Sermsak said the bulletproof vest idea could help save lives as teachers have come under frequent attack from suspected (Muslim) insurgents recently.
On Saturday evening in Bangkok, a week-and-a-half after the army seized power in a coup, about a dozen people gathered in the middle of a busy, elevated walkway connecting several of the capital’s most luxurious shopping malls. As pedestrians trundled past, the protesters sat down, pulled out book titles such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and began to read. In a country where the army has vowed to crack down on anti-coup protesters demanding elections and a return to civilian rule, in a place where you can be detained for simply holding something that says “Peace Please” in the wrong part of town, the small gathering was an act of defiance — a quiet demonstration against the army’s May 22 seizure of power and the repression that has accompanied it. “People are angry about this coup, but they can’t express it,” said a human rights activist who asked to be identified only by her nickname, Mook, for fear of being detained. “So we were looking for an alternative way to resist, a way that is not confrontational... And one of those ways is reading,” she said.
Their defiance, if you can call it that, is found in the titles they chose. Among them: Unarmed Insurrection , The Politics of Despotic Paternalism, The Power of Non-Violent Means. The junta has banned political gatherings of five people or more. However it is unclear what laws, if any, such low-key protests could be breaking. The coup, Thailand’s second in eight years, deposed an elected government that had insisted for months that the nation’s fragile democracy was under attack from protesters, the courts and, finally, the army. The leader of the junta, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, says the military had to intervene to restore order after half a year of debilitating protests that had crippled the former government and triggered sporadic violence which killed 28 people and injured more than 800.
Since taking over, the military has made clear it will tolerate no dissent and has launched a major campaign to silence critics and censor media. The junta has warned all citizens against doing anything that might incite conflict and the list of targets has been long. At least 14 partisan TV networks have been shut down along with nearly 3,000 unlicensed community radio stations. Independent international TV channels such as CNN and BBC have been blocked along with more than 300 Web sites, including New York-based Human Rights Watch’s Thailand page. Journalists and academics have been summoned by the army. Activists have fled. A sudden interruption of access to Facebook on Wednesday fueled widespread speculation that the nation’s new rulers were testing their censorship power; the junta, though, insisted it was merely a technical glitch.
Kasama Na Nagara, who works in the financial sector, said about 20 people were participating in the book readings. Saturday marked the third day that the group had organized such a protest. They have been careful to avoid soldiers. On Friday, the group was supposed to gather on another walkway where they had conducted a reading a day earlier. However, when troops showed up, they called it off. Human rights organizations are deeply concerned over how far the clampdown will go. Some people have begun using encrypted chat apps on their smartphones, for fear of being monitored, and at least one major bookstore in Bangkok, Kinokuniya, has pulled from its shelves political titles that could be deemed controversial.
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Thousands of customers in the Terminal 21 mall at the major Asoke intersection had to abandon early afternoon shopping, eating and movie-going after dozens of police moved inside the complex, following a five-minute rolling fight past pastry shops, a Starbucks and clothing stores. Police and soldiers, some carrying automatic weapons, as well as two army trucks, including a Humvee with a mounted machine-gun, responded to the intersection. The incident began 20 minutes earlier when several people at the entrance to Terminal 21, adjacent to the BTS Asoke Skytrain station, held aloft anti-coup placards and chanted “Freedom.” Such demonstrations are illegal under decrees issued by army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha who has seized all executive and legislative power in the country.
Police moving inside the Terminal 21 shopping center in Bangkok, Thailand
Earlier Sunday, nearly 6,000 soldiers and police had deployed to eight locations, including other shopping plazas and the Victory Monument, to discourage flashmob-style protests. There were no rallies at those locations. Instead, word spread through social media to converge on Terminal 21 after a posting of the location was announced on the Facebook page of Sombat Boon-ngamanong, the fugitive leader of the Red Sunday Group. Sombat has taunted authorities since the May 22 coup, daring them via social media “To Catch Me if You Can.” The dozens of anti-coup protesters, some from the red shirt movement, and perhaps 100 or more sympathetic spectators who converged on the area defied the top general's ban on such gatherings.
An armored vehicle rolls through the intersection adjacent to where a small anti-coup rally occurred in Bangkok, Thailand
Some on the Skywalk made a three finger salute, emulating the gesture meant to express appreciation and respect to those departing made by the repressed residents of poverty-stricken District 12 in the “Hunger Games” movies. Anyone apprehended defying Thailand's coup faces trial by military courts. Several arrests were reported Sunday. In a nationally broadcast address Friday, Prayuth announced a timetable of up to 15 months before the holding elections and framing a constitution to replace the one he has expurgated. Since the coup, which came several days after martial law was declared, several hundred politicians, activists and academics have been summoned to turn themselves in to the military. Most have been released after being warned not to engage in political activity or to leave the country.
A woman being forced into a taxi by suspected plainclothes police officers after she allegedly flashed a three-fingered salute signalling her opposition to the military coup in Bangkok, Thailand
A spokesman for the National Council of Peace and Order, the junta's formal organization, stated in a VOA interview, the coup was carried out to rid the kingdom of the influence of the family of Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin, a billionaire telecommunications tycoon, was ousted in Thailand's previous coup, in 2006. His sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, who became prime minister following 2011 national elections, was forced to step aside as the leader of the country's caretaker government following a judicial decree that she and some members of her Cabinet had abused their authority. Yingluck, who was among those who have been detained and released, posted on Sunday a picture of her with her son on social media, commenting that a lot had changed in Thailand during the past week, adding she wants to “thank you all again for support of me all along. And I would like to hereby extend my moral support to all Thais.”
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