[Tlc] FW: [UPI Asia Online] THAILAND: Thailand's dirty history

[Michael Montesano]

________________________________


Commentary: Thailand's dirty history
AWZAR THI
Column: Rule of Lords, UPI Asia Online [ http://www.upiasiaonline.com
<http://www.upiasiaonline.com/>  ]
HONG KONG, Feb. 28

HONG KONG, China,  The new prime minister of Thailand has outraged many
by refusing to admit that an infamous massacre ever occurred. In two
separate interviews Samak Sundaravej claimed that only one person died
on Oct. 6, 1976, when police and paramilitaries stormed Thammasat
University, killing at least 46 and forcing thousands into hiding. He
denied that he provoked the violence along with other rightists, saying
that it is "a dirty history."

He's right about that. But there's a lot more to this dirty history than
a single day of bloodshed or the marginal role that the prime minister
may have played in it. Violence on the scale of Oct. 6 does not erupt
unexpectedly. It is the finale to a thousand other lesser events. It is
the day-to-day writ large. 

In a doctoral thesis submitted to Cornell University last year, Tyrell
Haberkorn follows one of the trails of repeated, silent incidents that
culminated in the mayhem of 1976: the unsolved murders of dozens of
farmers' leaders in the north of Thailand.

The farmers became targets in part because they were trying to organize
their fellows when their country was a hot spot in the Cold War. With
communist neighbors and ideologues calling for the downfall of Bangkok,
modest demands for rent relief and land reform were enlarged and
distorted.

But that they made demands at all, Haberkorn argues, was already cause
to aggravate landholders who felt that "the farmers' claims challenged
their public, and self, image as generous individuals who took care of
the people who worked their rice fields." By expressing their needs as
rights, rather than privileges, the farmers crossed the line from
acceptable request into unacceptable protest.

The response was calculated and unforgiving. In mid-1975, 21 leaders of
the Farmers' Federation of Thailand were killed, eight in Chiang Mai
alone. Using the same methods as those of the 2003 war on drugs, the
killers came in broad daylight, unconcerned to hide themselves. And like
in 2003 the official response was to treat the dead not as victims but
as persons who somehow deserved whatever they got, a category of people
to which ordinary rules didn't apply.

The story of Intha Sribunruang, which Haberkorn retells in detail, is
illustrative. Intha was a 45-year-old gardener who had sold his paddy
fields to pay the school fees for his five children. He had served as a
local government official and was keenly concerned for the welfare of
other villagers in Chiang Mai.

After a new land rent control act was passed in 1974 Intha travelled
around the province to inform others of its terms and how farmers could
exercise them. His work angered sub-district officers and landholders
who were doing their best to prevent people from knowing about the new
law and how to use it.

On the morning of July 30, 1975, Intha was at home alone when two men on
a motorbike stopped outside. One dismounted and asked to buy some
cigarettes from the family's small general store. As Intha was giving
the man his change, he pulled a pistol and killed Intha instantly.

Again as in 2003, the police in 1975 cited a lack of evidence and
uncooperative witnesses as among the reasons for closing their
inquiries. The provincial commander demanded to see proof not with which
to catch Intha's killers but rather with which to show that the target
was really a farmers' leader.

Of the 1975 killings, only in Intha's case was anyone ever arrested. But
despite admitting to having been paid to do the job, the accused later
reversed his statement in court and walked free shortly thereafter.

The killings had the desired effect. Support for the farmers' federation
waned. The public was obliged to bear witness to crimes on which the
state declined to act and refused anyone else the opportunity to do
otherwise. The stage was set for the following October.

Haberkorn's question is not so much about why it was that the killers
could not be found in 1975 but why up to today, over three decades
later, they and the persons behind the murders still cannot be named,
let alone tried.

The answer lies in the nature of dirty history itself. Acknowledged
histories are not dirty. Secret histories are. Thailand's history is
dirty not because stuff happened, but because even now nobody is able to
tell the truth about what really went on, or name names.

This inability is largely the result of police, prosecutors and judges
altogether failing to do their jobs. Without criminal procedure, no
official records exist from which to draw a coherent picture of what
occurred or why. Without this much, even a prime minister can cast doubt
on established facts before a global television audience. No one was
caught, so was there anything wrong? And did it really happen anyway?

Thailand's dirty history is an example of what arises when the rule of
law is willfully and consistently undermined. It is an example of what
happens when constitutional order is shamelessly displaced and
parliamentary authority trivialized, both from without and within. For
as long as these practices continue so too will there be dirty history,
not only in the past, but also into the present.

(Haberkorn's thesis can be downloaded in PDF format from:
http://ratchasima.wordpress.com/files/2008/02/haberkorn-cornell.pdf).

--

(Awzar Thi is the pen name of a member of the Asian Human Rights
Commission with over 15 years of experience as an advocate of human
rights and the rule of law in Thailand and Burma. His Rule of Lords blog
can be read at http://ratchasima.net <http://ratchasima.net/> .) 

http://www.upiasiaonline.com/Human_Rights/2008/02/28/thailands_dirty_his
tory/2449/




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