Bangkok Protests

It is a very sad situation. I think it would be unfair to place the blame solely on the government, though. The red shirts are very close to Thaksin who was extremely corrupt, and they have been demonstrating illegally for a long time now.

 

To be fair, a coup happens in Thailand virtually every other year and twice on leap years.

 

What should the government do then? The red shirts are disrupting business/traffic in the middle of Bangkok. So far the red shirts are demanding new elections immediately or they will protest indefinitely (they've been capable of doing this logistically so far because of financial support from Thaksin). If the govt. gives in and calls for new elections immediately, the other faction (the yellow shirts) have threatened to start protesting in retaliation (like the way they blocked the airport in 2008). Whichever way they choose, it'll end up pissing off some faction.

From what I understand of the current struggle, the problem is that there is a huge country/city divide kind of like the dem/repub divide in the US, only much worse because those in the countryside are much worse off economically. And to appeal to their base, the political parties of both sides are willing to exploit citizens of the other side. I sympathize with the red shirt movement, but the problem is they are being led by a populist who may make things even worse if he gets back into power.

I'm not taking sides as I don't understand enough, but before criticizing we have to ask what viable alternatives the current govt has.

 

Of course not. I'm just giving you a reason to why people are sensitized to protests in Thailand. Any violence is bad.

 

This is not true. Thailand's government tried to resolve this peacefully for a long time - in China and in Iran, the government reacted violently immediately.

Also, there is a lot more freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Thailand than in either Iran or China.

 

I spent a lot of time there a few years ago and its very sad to see. Those are some of the nicer parts of the city that are basically being torn apart. I was reading an article in one of their papers and it was describing the plight of the people in the protest zone, who are basically trapped in their apartments with dwindling food and no electricity.

That said, people trying to draw parallels between other pro-democracy protests simply don't understand the situation. It's very hard to pick a good guy here. Basically in Thailand what you have are two well-financed, competing armed gangs with different factions of the military and police behind them competing for control, which makes the redshirts a lot less sympathetic than say protesters in Iran or Tibet.

I suppose it's somewhat easy to want to idealize the redshirts since on the ground they consist of the rural and the poor, but the fact that they are all huge supporters of (and probably being run by) Thaksin Shinawatra, a massively corrupt, pretend-populist billionaire (who is actually a member of the traditional chinese-thai elite) and who looted the country and evaded taxes on an industrial scale. Also, the campaign of bombing shopping malls doesn't exactly resonate of Gandhi-esque passive resistance.

Another difference is thte general openness and press freedom (unless you make fun of the king) that exists in Thailand as opposed ot China or Iran. The government generally does not engage in authoritarian censorship and you're not going to find them being painted as the villain so easily. When "man of the people" Shinawatra was in power, journalists had it worse off, he had a campaign of filing hundreds of libel suits against his critics in the press in order to try to bankrupt them.

 

You still haven't told us what you think the Thai govt should do. Ahbisit already offered to call for elections in November, 1 year earlier than he has to as a compromise - remember, he has to keep the yellow shirts happy too - and the red shirts rejected it. Even before the military crackdown, part of the red shirt protests included storming a hospital and grenade attacks on train stations. While the majority of the red shirts are ordinary civilians, this is a well organized and funded operation - transport to haul protesters in from the country side, food, portable toilets, and at least some protesters are even paid. This isn't a normal uprising, this is an astro-turfed operation with a (at best) shady leader.

 

I've been following them somewhat and to answer your question about why this isn't getting as much coverage, at least in the US, is that there are a few other stories like the oil spill and primaries that are taking up more coverage. Also we have things like "Draw Mohammed Day" that are attracting more attention.

As the other posters have noted also that this is one where it is hard to completely sympathize with the Red Shirts given that they are supporters of Thaksin, and that it is hard for people not that familiar with Asian politics to understand what the protests are about. This isn't Tiananmen or the Philipiines in 1986.

I will agree with you though that this is a human tragedy and on that level probably deserves more coverage than its getting.

 

Tiananmen timeline:
4/18: Protests began
5/3: Marshal law declared
6/4: Time of crackdown

Does not sounds like immediate to me.

 

Thailand has given the world great things like cheese rolls and Tom Ka Gai, so they get a free pass.

 

I think SamFisher has explained it in better words than me why it is not the same.

 

Or, China's and Iran's governments should be treated as leniently as Thailand's.

 

The protesters have a legitimate case. Thaksin dominated the ballot, and his allies won two subsequent votes. But the military and courts threw them out. This signaled to the protesters that their votes essentially didn't count. Democracy in Thailand is a joke.

Obviously there's no condemnation from the leader of the free world, because there's no oil in Thailand.

 

Thaksin's also a pretty obvious crook who has defrauded to state out of billions and used the proceeds to effectively buy off his electoral machine - again, hard to find a sympathetic party here.

 

There is oil in Thailand. And, lots of natural gas.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3159/is_4_221/ai_61893068/

 

So much hypocrisy