Bangkok Wakes Up in Mourning
I think most of the expats in Thailand like me thought they would never see the day when almost 20 people died from clashes in one day. At the start of the evening, the 10 of April small rumors came about one person died and that was maybe expected but then close to midnight over five people reported dead including one foreigner journalist. When I woke up this morning, 18 people have died and over 700 injured in the clashes in Bangkok I just burst into tears. I will not go into why this happen in detail I will just mention some of it because most of the things are in the blog in old posts. One side is blaming Thaksin and yes he might be part of it and other parts blaming the elite class or the poor class. However, the root of the problem is not easy to describe and people are to easily fooled by loyalty to one side.
Class War
It has been a long wait for these things to come in Thailand. The big English newspapers have finally written about it and we have written about it. How a few elite in Bangkok owns most of the land in Thailand and only a few people have all the money in the Thai banks. In any country where they trying to create democracy and they have different classes, you will have problems. When rich people can commit crimes and not get punished and poor, people get 20 years in prison for stealing a tractor because he could not afford a lawyer. We have no real middle class in Thailand, we might have one in Bangkok but not in the rest of the country, they are poor people. Thailand main income is rice, rubber, and not tourists but to get rubber and rice you need to have people work in farms. The problem is they do not get the money from all this income they do not even own the land. A middle class person in Bangkok with whatever education can hardly call himself or herself rich because they will not make more then 20 000 THB a month in their lifetime. The elite can buy cars and even houses just from the swing of a credit card.
Press Freedom
There is no trust anymore in any media in Thailand, it is totally divided and no one really want to believe what any media says anymore. That is not because of the current government it is been like this for a long time. The people that call themselves journalist are just copycats or pretty people asking stupid questions. I know maybe it is Thai culture but not many journalists ask hard questions and if they do, they are killed or fired. Thailand needs total press freedom more than ever before so that people can see the truth whatever it is.
Bad Riot Control
If you look on any country in Europe and the police force they have they know how to handle a riot very well. Only in dangerous situation, they draw a gun and fire in the air first. A small number of police officers can control big groups of people even without water and teargas. They have training and they know what they are doing. I am sorry to say Thailand’s army and police have none of that training and they take to weapons to soon. This will lead to the demonstrator’s use weapons as well. If somebody use weapon in a riot take him out but do not shoot in the air and at the crowd with any aim. I do not know who started the shooting yesterday because I saw redshirts with M-16 machine guns as well.
Greedy Politicians
Most Asian countries have strong punishments on corruption like China and Vietnam and in Japan, they take their own life in shame. In Thailand all that happens is that, he or she will be moved to an inactive post and can continue with his crime spree. This included the Police and Army as well they are not fired just move to inactive post. Police is not promoted for his good work but because he knows, people and he bring in lots of cash to the station. Last month a Police officer paid 10 million THB to be moved to Pattaya and he is still working. This off course creates a signal to the rest of the country that if the top is corrupted we can be as well.
All of these things have created the bad feeling we now have in Thailand and they are all a factor to what happens yesterday on Bloody Saturday. Let us hope these people did not die in vain and they are the first and last victim in this class war.
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