Provoking conflict?

For some time PPT has been concerned that the political strategy adopted by the Democrat Party and the government that it leads has been increasingly repressive.

A party that has come to government by the combined actions of the military and royalists is inevitably underpinned by the forces that have backed authoritarian regimes for several decades.

We have pointed to the government’s use of lese majeste and computer crimes laws to limit freedom of expression in the media and more broadly.

These laws have also been used to intimidate and lock up opponents of the royalist regime. PPT has repeatedly pointed out that the Democrat Party-led government has used the Internal Security Act to limit the right to legal protest.

Several times we have pointed out that the government has glaring double standards, selectively applying laws when it acts against perceived opponents while supporting allies.

PPT has also been concerned about the language that has been used in recent days to attack opponents, in particular noting the increased tendency to label political opponents as traitors.

We have observed that the government and its allies, most especially rightists and the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), have been using ultra-nationalist discourses to attack opponents and to ramp up anger and xenophobia against “traitors” who do not support “Nation, Religion and Monarchy.”

PPT has pointed out that these calls have, in previous years, resulted in violence, and we pointed to events in the 1973-76 period, which ended with a massacre of students at Thammasat University, led by extreme rightists imbued with royalist, anti-communist and nationalist propaganda that revolved around concocted and exaggerated “stories” sometimes peddled by the mainstream media (on 1976, go here for a PDF).

PPT is therefore disturbed to see similar trends developing in 2009. In an earlier post, we discussed the alleged car bomb threat to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

We pointed out that back on 15 July 2006, when there were reports of an assassination plot against Thaksin Shinawatra, a spokesperson for the Democrat Party was dismissive. And in August 2006,

when the government claimed a failed car bomb assassination attempt against Thaksin, with arrests made and a bomb displayed, there was widespread skepticism, including from the Bangkok Post and other mainstream media.

Academics urged the government to resist using the “plot” as a pretense for repression.

We asked: where is that skepticism now? Where are the academic protectors of human rights?

By the way, it is reported that the “Chiang Mai Provincial Court Monday rejected police’s request for an arrest warrant against a local red-shirt on ground that police’s evidence is too weak.”

Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Taugsuban has added to the choking feeling of deja vu that is enveloping Thailand.

In the Bangkok Post (23 September 2009: “Govt: Aliens banned from protests”) he is reported to have stated that the “government believes the red-shirt United Front for Democracy against Democracy (UDD) is planning to use foreign workers to swell the numbers at its planned anti-government rallies…”.

The government has set about warning “employers that foreign labourers would not be allowed to take part in the series of protests planned to begin on Nov 29 …”.

Suthep warned that the “government will take legal action if they fail to comply, because only Thai people have the right to voice their political opinions…”.

PPT emphasizes this last point because we do not believe that we have seen this point stated previously. All of those foreign commentators in Thai newspapers had better be on guard from now on.

More seriously, this statement by Suthep is reprehensible for two other reasons. First, it targets migrant workers, arguably the most marginalized and exploited group in Thailand, and does so in a way that could engender hatred against them.

Second, as a correspondent to Bangkok Pundit notes, this move has scary resonances with 1976 massacre, when it was rumored that the Thammasat students had been infiltrated by Vietnamese communists.

As the Democrat Party and the government moves once again to invoke the Internal Security Act, PPT is coming to the conclusion that the government is provoking conflict. We are yet to be convinced that this is a deliberate strategy.

It may be that the government is simply piling up repression and provocation and is unaware of the cumulative impact.

More seriously, it could also be that the strategy is, as PAD speakers urged, a strategy aimed at “traitors” that means finally and “quickly finish[ing] them off for the sake of our beloved King and ancestors, so that Thais stop quarrelling with one another because of these scoundrels.”