One Year After Thailand's Bloodless Coup

One Year After Thailand's Bloodless Coup

By Richard S. Ehrlich

BANGKOK, Thailand -- One year after destroying a popular elected government in a bloodless coup, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha rules with absolute power over a country suffering from newly discovered "death camps" for Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants, a flat economy, and diplomatic feuds with the U.S. and Europe.

Gen. Prayuth publicly shrugs off Washington's criticism of his May 22, 2014 coup and his junta's military trials and coercive "attitude adjustment" confinement for civilian dissidents.

After ripping up Thailand's constitution, he orchestrated an interim charter giving himself absolute power as prime minister "regardless of the legislative, executive or judicial" branches, plus immunity from prosecution.

Gen. Prayuth then empowered Thailand's U.S.-trained army to officially function as police by seizing property and detaining suspects.

"Even though we didn't like the coup, we train Thailand's military so that in the future when all this settles down, America will still have good relations with Thailand," said one American who trains Thailand's paramilitary rangers and special forces.

"We are playing the long game, because of our competition with China in this region.

"General Prayuth's problem is he is not a politician. And he has a lot of loose canons under him. He is a good officer, respected by his troops, but he is now in over his head," the American military trainer said on May 17.

Gen. Prayuth often appears uncomfortable and testy when journalists question his policies.

But he exudes confidence. When asked about the possibility of a counter-coup against him, Gen. Prayuth responded last week:

"Who would topple me? What half-wit would do anything like that?"

In April, he described his irritability by saying, "When I see red, I sometimes end up with a splitting headache. Who knows, the veins in my brain might burst and I could die before the woes of this country get dealt with."

On May 19, the coup-toppled former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra posted $900,000 bail and pled not guilty to "dereliction of duty" charges resulting from her rice crop subsidies which cost billions of dollars during her 2011-2014 administration.

Ms. Yingluck faces other charges including questionable financial compensation to Red Shirts and other supporters who were injured or killed during pro-democracy protests in 2010.

Gen. Prayuth participated in a 2006 coup which ousted her influential wealthy brother, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is now a international fugitive dodging a two-year prison sentence for corruption.

The general's royalist and right-wing supporters are meanwhile entrenching themselves to prevent any return to power by Ms. Yingluck, Mr. Thaksin or their allies.

Gen. Prayuth and his supporters are expected to eventually unveil a constitution restricting future elections to a minority of parliamentary seats under a system dominated by pro-junta appointees.

Though they have been repeatedly out-voted during national polls, Gen. Prayuth's mostly Bangkok-based supporters praise his coup for ending months of street clashes which killed more than 20 people before his putsch.

They hail the general as a stern, sincere leader dedicated to establishing stability, in contrast to Thailand's squabbling, unpredictable and often deadly democracy.

"I have no doubt Gen. Prayuth had good intentions when he seized administration of the country by force," Bangkok Post contributing editor Atiya Achakulwisut wrote on May 5.

"I believe him when he says, repeatedly via interviews and his weekly Friday briefing, that he stepped in to stem the increasing violence and to save lives from being lost," she said.

Gen. Prayuth's critics say the political violence before his coup was incited by his supporters so he could step in as Thailand's savior.

Today, Gen. Prayuth is under international scrutiny for his handling of Muslim ethnic Rohingyas and Bangladeshis who want to land on Thailand's tourist-friendly beaches during their desperate, often fatal attempts to cross the Indian Ocean in overcrowded, ill-prepared boats.

Thousands of Muslim men, women and children are escaping racism and stateless status in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar, and harsh poverty in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

They are trying to reach prosperous Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia by transiting Thailand's land and waters.

Illegal human traffickers in all five countries exploit them for cash or as slaves, frequently holding them hostage during voyages while demanding thousands of dollars extra to continue their passage -- or else.

In recent weeks, Thai authorities discovered their gruesome so-called "death camps" in southern Thailand near the Malaysian border.

Hundreds of Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants had been secretly imprisoned in dozens of jungle-based smugglers' camps, alongside at least 37 graves of those who died from disease or malnutrition or were allegedly murdered because they were unable to pay ransoms.

Gen. Prayuth responded by not welcoming the boat people to land.

He then invited Southeast Asian officials along with U.S. and other Western representatives to Bangkok on May 29 to discuss the worsening tragedy at a "Special Meeting on Irregular Migration in the Indian Ocean."

Bangkok "will not push back migrants stranded in Thai territorial water," the foreign ministry announced on May 20.

Gen. Prayuth meanwhile also faces a southern insurgency by minority ethnic Malay-Thai Islamists.

On May 14, they unleashed a scattered three-day assault in Yala province with improvised explosives, wounding 22 people and damaging 36 businesses and institutions.

The insurgents' fight against "Thailand's colonizers" is to reestablish an annexed 100-year-old Muslim homeland in the southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat where more than 6,000 people have been killed on all sides since 2004.

China has offered a diplomatic and financial lifeline to Gen. Prayuth by warmly embracing his junta, refraining from public criticism of his coup, and arranging military and economic deals.

China is offering to extend its existing southern transport routes -- on the Mekong River and by highway across Laos -- into Thailand where Beijing wants to build a lucrative fast railway line to speed Chinese exports to Bangkok's port on the Gulf of Siam.

***

Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco, California, reporting news from Asia since 1978, and recipient of Columbia University's Foreign Correspondent's Award. He is a co-author of three non-fiction books about Thailand, including "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews; 60 Stories of Royal Lineage; and Chronicle of Thailand: Headline News Since 1946. Mr. Ehrlich also contributed to the final chapter, "Ceremonies and Regalia," in a new book titled King Bhumibol Adulyadej, A Life's Work: Thailand's Monarchy in Perspective.

His websites are

http://asia-correspondent.tumblr.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/animists/sets

https://gumroad.com/l/RHwa

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