Around 6pm (Bangkok time) on Wednesday, Thailand’s Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva declared a state of emergency in the capital city of Bangkok. As scary as they may sound it actually means very little in terms of people’s day to day lives. There are no tanks surrounding the city or armed soldiers roaming the streets. In fact, the protesters are still protesting and my street is still barricaded by the protesters who has pretty much taken control of the area.
The state of emergency was primarily declared so that the PM could show people who are growing impatient with his “we don’t want to resort to violence” approach that he is doing something. The desire to be seen as someone who is actually doing something may have what prompted him to send in the military to put down the protests on Saturday which turned into a total disaster.
I don’t like criticizing my host country much but most of us farangs here are simply amazed at how openly the protesters are allowed to flaunt the law. And when the police and military are called in they always seem to retreat after “negotiating” some small concession out of the protesters. Sort of like, “Hey, if you guys promise to pick up your litter we won’t come in here and crack some skulls, ok, na?”
Unlike back home, the military and the police don’t seem to report to the executive branch of the government. They are sort of independent of the government and decide which orders they will and won’t follow. Last year during the seizure of the two major airports in Bangkok, the military and police pretty much told the then PM to go pound sand when he told them to remove the protesters and restore order.
Saturday’s violence was largely predictable even though nobody could guess the day or time. Here’s your recipe for bloodshed:
1. Hastily throw together a plan for ousting well-entrenched demonstrators.
2. Make sure that even though you’ve spent billions of baht on snazzy riot gear that virtually nobody has any training in riot control.
3. Establish a pattern of retreating from conflict so that both your troops and the protesters know that once the situation escalates the protesters will be allowed to do pretty much whatever they damn well please and the soldiers will retreat back to their barracks for a nice hot meal.
4. Have no plan for dealing with armed demonstrators even though you know they have access to hand grenades, guns, and aren’t shy about using sticks, hammers, and other makeshift weapons.
When that’s all served up you’ll have 20 dead (including 5 soldiers) and 834 injured.
From the early reports coming in, they armed the military with rubber bullets with some soldiers having hot weapons (live ammunition). They sent them in clearly outnumbered and obviously not well trained and said “Hey, let’s see what happens.” Despite the fact that it is obvious even to us farangs sitting on the sidelines, military intelligence didn’t seem to be aware that the protesters would be armed. So when things kicked off and the protesters started returning fire (real bullets vs. the military’s rubber bullets) all hell broke loose.
Frightened soldiers started firing into the air trying to get the crowd of protesters to back off as protesters shot AK47’s, M16’s, pistols and hand grenades back at them. And when you have a top-down military that discourages any sort of initiative on the part of junior officers one doesn’t even have to guess what happened when the red shirts killed the commanding officer of the operation.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just becoming frustrated with the situation. If you’re going to crack down then do it properly. If you’re not going to do it properly then don’t do anything and let them topple your government.
Okay, with that off my chest, in a few hours I’m trekking up to the heart of Thailand, Issan, where I plan on spending a few days hanging out and enjoying the Songkran festival (Thailand New Year). Rice paddies, buffalos, and lots of being targeted by the locals for a good dosing with a water canon. Good times 🙂
Seriously (as if the rest of this post wasn’t serious already), during the Songkran festival people splash each other with water. Not a little mist or a small spray but bucket-loads of water. There seems to be a special interest in soaking the farangs. I don’t know why. I guess it’s sort of fun to knock us down a few notches.
I’ll be packing . . . a high pressure monster water gun. I’ll also be carrying protection in the form of a waterproof bag to keep my phone and camera from becoming very expensive paper weights.
Hopefully the only clashes I’ll be reporting over the next few days will involve serious soakings.
BTW, you can see two more videos shot by the same dude who shot the one I used as my opener.