Besieged in Bangkok: The Red Shirt Revolt

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A female pedestrian walks past the Red Shirts' 3.5 sq km barricaded zone.
(Photo copyright by Richard S. Ehrlich)

The situation in Bangkok is escalating after Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva withdrew an earlier offer to hold elections later this year. The set date – November 14 – has now been abandoned. The plot thickens as the Red Shirt protesters are gathering force, implementing diversionary tactics on security forces and issuing more demands. It has attracted an assortment of followers, among them the renegade army general Seh Daeng (Khattiya Sawasdipol). Not lacking enthusiasm, he boasted about how he managed to repel the government forces at various stages of the siege. ‘Our tactics are better than the governments,’ he beamed in confidence to Mark MacKinnon of the Globe and Mail (May 14). The wounded general is now fighting for his life, having received a shot to the head while talking to foreign reporters outside the besieged camp.

The Red Shirts, mainly consisting of indigent farmers and those associated with the working class, have become a remarkable force within the Thai political landscape since protests began in March. They have taken areas intended to inflict maximum damage on the city’s authorities. The shopping and tourist hubs have been seized. The economic recovery that had been hoped has been stopped in its tracks, with malls and hotels closed.

The protesters have rattled the military establishment. They issue demands from their occupied zone, a mere 3.5 sq km protected by an assortment of bamboo poles, concrete blocks and tyres. They want those responsible for the April 10 crack down to account for their misdeeds. They want Abhisit to resign, claiming that the has colluded with the elites of Bangkok to engineer the collapse of the democratically elected former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Shinawatra was deposed in a 2006 military coup. Now, Abhisit himself faces enormous pressures, a situation he may regard with some irony given that he came to power in 2008 on the back of another shirted revolution, the colour then being yellow.

Efforts to disperse the Red Shirts have proven unproductive. Within the camp, a violent sentiment has taken hold. Not amongst the majority – as always, the peaceful protest can transform in a eye, a result of a cast projectile, the shot bullet, the errantly cast bomb that kills a figure of authority or a pro-government supporter. Thirty people have been killed since April, with more than 1,400 wounded.

The latest efforts involve the Thai government hoping to starve the camp into submission, something akin to medieval siege tactics. The list of casualties is growing, often the handiwork of snipers busying themselves in buildings adjacent to the camp. Tourism, Bangkok’s life blood, is drying up. Investors are finding the environment toxic and drawing back.

A blood bath may be imminent, with promises by the government that the death penalty will be meted out to the protesters, notably those dabbling in the use of grenades and various other weapons. ‘We cannot retreat now,’ intones Abhisit. The loyalist backers of the government are getting edgy and want a solution quickly. Brutality begets brutality, and the government is unlikely to be disappointed by the hideous results this approach will reap.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

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