So over the last couple years a group of Thai rappers have been putting out cyphers under the name Rap Against Dictatorship. Today they dropped their latest, telling their listeners to get out and join the protests. (Turn on closed captioning for English subtitles.)
Tomorrow, the proposal for a new Thai constitution will get a vote in congress. It is guaranteed to loose, because the entire Senate is appointed by the coup government, and the House is 20% coup government party as well.
Today, the pro-democracy protesters gathered outside the Government House (where congress meets). The police made it ugly real quick. The protester’s goal was to meet outside the House, have a rally, and release some balloons with the message, “we order to you to be below the constitution” (in other words: “nobody should be above the constitution”–not even the king).
The police parked trucks to block the road and put up barricades. Protesters started moving the barricades, so the police gathered the handful of royalist Yellow shirt counter-protesters behind their barricades (I think there were about 50 Yellow Shirts and at that time maybe about 20,000 democracy protesters). The police then shot protesters with water cannons, this time using a purple liquid instead of a blue one. Evidently, the purple liquid is less diluted than the the blue, so–basically–they shot children, teen girls, old grannies with fire hoses of pepper spray.
This is not an exaggeration.
Quite a few people had to go to the hospital. One guy was holding up the three finger salute (symbolizing the protest’s original three demands) and they shot him right in the hand, breaking his wrist. There’s a picture of a teen girl being shot right in the face. A child was sent to the hospital on a stretcher. They also shot teargas for the first time.
The police then opened the gates and let out gangs of yellow shirt thugs to start beating protesters with sticks and throwing rocks. It would appear that some protesters threw things back or were throwing water bottles at cops. But overall, it’s pretty one-sided with Yellow Shirts just trying to have a street brawl, and democracy protesters mostly retreating, despite having 100 to 1 great numbers.
This was the scene between about 4PM-6PM. Around 6PM, people were arriving from work, and the numbers swelled even further. Police had pretty much blown their wad, and suddenly the POLICE were kettled. Protesters encircled the area from all directions, took over the main roads, and began tearing down the barricades and moving the trucks.
One of the jokes about these protests has been that it’s the one thing that has stopped vocational students from beating each other up. Here in Thailand, street toughs end up going to vocational schools to become mechanics and such, so vocational schools are basically the delinquent schools from 80’s anime, complete with turf warfare. However, they have united under the protest banner and now act as guards. But make no mistake: a lot of the guards are also teen girls who simply don helmets and goggles. If you have the equipment, you can be a guard.
Anyway, the vocational students got together, tied ropes to the trucks and moved them out of the way!
I was at work this whole time, and typically I don’t join protests on work days, because by the time I’m out they’re pretty much over. But I had to try to make it to this one, even if I was too late. This one was just clearly such an inflection point, and i was so pissed at what I was seeing. I decided to just head over solo.*
In the next post I’ll present the day’s narrative with retweets, then post my own pics and videos from the last hour.
*As a complication of her nose surgery, my GF is now suffering from Meniere’s disease–a constant ringing in her ears, sound sensitivity, and some vertigo. As a result, she’s been freaked out about going to protests (lots of loudspeakers and very exhausting). She’s had this before, and it can last two weeks or six months or forever, and stress can be a factor. So if I can’t find another protest buddy, I might just have to start regularly going solo.
Okay, I’m just gonna repost my own tweets, because I am so very tired; and it’s a bit annoying to select photos and videos I took on my phone.
Basically, I headed over at 7:30PM. I grabbed a quick dinner while debating if I should go directly to the protest after work or just go home and fight another day. I conclude that I should just go, even though I probably couldn’t get a taxi, even though I probably couldn’t get through, even though it would probably be over when I got there.
I concluded that I was making a dumb decision, but I had to try. I’m really, really glad that I did.
I let my GF know that I was considering going. She was a bit worried, so she ended up being Microchip to my Punisher. I basically kept her in my ear with bluetooth most of the evening, updating her on what was going on while she helped sometimes with translation or confirming that I was going the right way. It was surprisingly easy to get a taxi to take me walking distance to the protest.
Along the way, my GF saw that there was a shooting: a Yellow Shirt evidentaly shot a protester, who was rushed to the hospital. Apparently that was that; information is still a little scarce. Still, form watching live streams, I could tell that things were pretty calm. It was basically a normal rally, and the police were completely pacified.
when I arrived, I was surprised to see that the protesters had basically taken the street leading leading to the protest, and turned it into a block party with street food and live music. It was a ten minute walk through the fair to the main protest. Between the two there was an invisible wall: surrounding two giant blue trucks (barricades commandeered by the protesters) there were drifting clouds of teargas. I didn’t really realize it until it hit me, though actually there were signs everywhere. If I had time to write this well, it would be a suspense scene: Why are there so many fewer people here? Why are people handing out water? Why are people pouring it over their faces? Uh…duh. Well. I was trying to take pictures and talk to my GF at the same time, okay?
I’ve never been teargassed before, but honestly I thought this was a good learning experience. If you’ve ever sparred before, you know there’s a huge difference in preparation between someone who’s taken punches vs. someone who hasn’t. If you’re likely going to have to deal with some physical pain, the best way to prepare is to expose yourself to it a lot beforehand, just so you don’t lose your head completely.
This was wasn’t getting totally enveloped in teargas, but it was at least some exposure in a pretty safe environment. I could tell it was nearby by the smell: smoke and aerosol. Then, if you walk into it, it’s basically the the same as if you’ve ever eaten really spicy chicken and then accidentally rubbed your face. Which–uh–honestly happens to me all the time, because there’s a spicy chicken place I eat at regularly. It felt like that. I never lost eyesight, and I had my own water. I cleaned my face twice, and a few minutes later felt completely normal. If I were trapped in a visible cloud of that with other people: yeah, it would be quite distracting.
I realized later that there was a tall who had hung back and would detect patches of teargas (I think just by smelling it), and then direct people what path to take. Solidarity.
It felt pretty weird to have this, like, invisible peril between the block party and the protest. it was like, a real life dedication test.
I just caught the last hour or so of the protest, which was enough time to feel connected to people, take some pictures, hear Penguin speak, and see the balloons released. My GF helped me get a motorbike to the skytrain to go home. Pics and vids in the next post, then I’m going to bed.
in a way, it’s heartening to see that fascists have the same playbook everywhere, and the same weaknesses.
Oh yeah, I forgot to spell it out, but of course propaganda news sources are going to report that democracy protesters started attacking police, and then Yellow Shirts fought back and “both sides became violent” or whatever.
That’s obviously been the government’s plan since they started busing in police from other provinces wearing yellow shirts (see past posts for pictures of this).
I really don’t know how well it will work. Honestly…I think it’s too little too late. This is an existential threat to their government, and they’ve let it grow really big. The rural farmers have already allied with students. That’s, like, the hardest part, and it’s already done. They’re stuck having 50 thugs take on thousands of people… I might make a longer post about this later, but…they really should have just gone full China and sent 100 people to jail for life, then posted police with automatic rifles all over the place–back when it was just 10,000 people. Protests over. But–uh–they tried to play the PR game. Too little too late.
Meanwhile, I’ve been REALLY pleasantly surprised by the protest movement. They’ve consolidated very well. The message is coherent. No in-fighting. There’s a political branch with very light coordination and both the politicians and activists tour around the country.
I could turn out to be horrifically wrong, but I think at this point there’s no turning back and government will go down. The real issue is if we get a new constitution that limits the role of the king.
Also, I can’t tell if the protest leaders understand that they have to completely dismantle the military. Like, every single coup in the last 100 years (one ever 7 years since 1932) has been carried out by the military (maybe or maybe not on behalf of the king).
And…let me put it this way:
Since 1976, the Thai military has participated in 6 domestic massacres and killed 350-550+ Thai civilians.
They have killed 250+ domestic insurgents (Muslim terrorists in the South)
They have fought in 0 wars and killed 0 foreign adversaries.
In Thailand, all men are conscripted into military at age 21 (unless they bribe their way out of it). This past year, a soldier went on mass shooting spree and killed 20+ people at a shopping mall, because his superior officer scammed him out of land. The Thai military regularly buys expensive tanks from China and the US at double price (and officials pocket the difference). Recently, they bought submarines, despite the fact that Thailand’s oceans are too shallow to use them.
These are widely reported facts, and most Thai people hate the military. The Move Forward party ran on defunding them. So, the protesters aren’t saying they’ll dismantle them, but I hope they have an unstated plan to defund them through government.
If the Thai military isn’t destroyed, they WILL simply have another coup. It is a certainty. I’ll post the last 20 years of Thai history in a future post to illustrate this.
Sorry for all the really long replies. I feel like I have to explain everything, because I know all these facts are new to everyone reading.
So tonight was another huge protest (seemed like at least 100k, but it’s really hard to estimate crowds this huge).
They gathered on a stretch of road near some major luxury malls and a major police precinct. There was music, chanting, speeches, and a parade of giant rubber ducks–now the unofficial protest mascot. The closing ceremony was to throw paint on the precinct I’m retaliation for being shot with purple pepper spray yesterday night.
This time there was basically no police presence at all and no Yellow Shirts. This is basically what happened the first time they attacked with water cannons. It sparked general outrage and then they just poured with their tales between their legs. Like I said: too little too late. They just don’t seem to get that they’re not going to win hearts and minds, and they can’t smear hundreds of thousands of people that cross every demographic of Thai culture. The gov/military/police need to commit to simply being feared, but they still think they’re playing a PR game.
I definitely pressed some wrong buttons but lo, it emergeth
Thanks @gary !
As a small update, pending a large catch-up roundup on protests for the last two weeks:
The big news today is that it’s the first hearing date for 40-or-so protest leaders who were summoned to court, charged with breaking the les majeste law (law that says you can’t defame the king).
I believe the youngest charged is in high school–maybe 16-17? Most charged are in their early 20’s. They all face 15 years if convicted.
Among those charged are Rung and Penguin, the leaders I posted about live when their dubiously legal prison motorcade was seized by protesters. At that time, they had paid bail for other charges but rather than being released they were moving them from prison to prison, sort of through a loophole in the law.
Now they’re actually being charged. They have major legal teams supporting them, and it’s unclear how the government will support their case–if they will basically call protesting defamation or if they will grab specific quotes. For the most part, I don’t think leaders come out and call the king an asshole, but I’m sure that some random thing they’ve said in criticism of the crown could be called defamation.
In any case, we’ve already seen that the movement still functions to a high standard without those leaders. And if they’re convicted, I think the protests may be the biggest ever.
Hey guys, long time no see!
The movement is still going, but protests officially took a break in late Dec through January to allow students to focus on final exams and farmers to harvest.
There were also some reports of the trade school kids getting into internal scuffles. Y’all may be interested to know that around that time, Free People, one of the student groups that formed the current movement wrote a long Facebook post about how we should not be afraid of the concept of Communism.
It was a bit hard for me to follow by translating Thai, but the responses seemed to be mostly negative, along the lines of what would go down in the US: old people saying that Communism = Stalinism.
In the 1970’s when the military massacred hundreds (maybe over a thousand) student protesters, those that escaped moved north and formed a separatist Communist state, which persisted until the mid-90’s when the King offered them amnesty. Curiously, some of those students have now come out in support of the current king. Other than that, Thai people have little exposure to Communist theory, it’s not much translated, and they get a lot of US media.
I don’t think this created a major schism in the movement, but it’s interesting.
Anyway, we’ve now had what are for Thailand some major Covid outbreaks. Previously, we had about 1,500 cases in March, then went into a serious people-imposed lockdown, and re-emerged with heavy mask wearing. We had about 60 total deaths and 0-9 new cases per day (almost all people repatriating) until late Dec.
Around Christmas, Myanmar was in the middle of their first big wave, which came over from India. Myanmar is a border country, and poor Burmese immigrants often cross the border to get work. While the border is technically closed, supposedly some infected immigrants bribed their way in and it led to a major outbreak (hundreds of people in one city).
So now it’s up to provinces to lock themselves down, but it has been spreading in a circle around BKK.
Deaths are now 70 with the most per day being 2. But we’re almost up to 13,000 cases. While this doesn’t compare with a lot of European countries (we have a pop of 70 million), the spread has been rapid, and yet people are reluctant to fully lock down again.
This will likely further delay protests. Though it seems that people are just taking it as a break. The original outbreak was also a lull in the protest movement, just as it was starting, so it seems like it will be possible to get momentum back, especially once all the teens and 20-somethings charged with badmouthing the king have court dates.
So yeah: I’m taking the rest myself and will update you guys when things gear up again. For immediate updates check my Twitter or the news Twitters I listed in my early posts.
I’ve seen a fair amount of major news coverage, but for those who don’t know, there was a military coup in Myanmar over the weekend. Myanmar is one of Thailand’s neighbors with a similar political history to Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. They were a colony, then had an uprising followed by a “socialist” dictatorship, which gave way to Democracy in 1988 after a hard fought student uprising in which 1,000+ students were massacred.
Over the last decade, the military has been exerting more and more disregard for the rule of law and has committed a genocide against Rohingya Muslims, am ethnic minority which they cleansed in the name of Buddhism. Wikipedia says about 24,000 were shot, 18,000 were raped, and 36,000 were burned alive (think I remembered those #'s correctly). Most of the living fled to refugee camps in Bangladesh, though there are some in concentration camps.
Last week, they had an election, and the military party lost in a landslide. Afterwards, they announced a coup.
If you want to help, the best thing you can do right now as a foreigner is signal boost with the hashtag #SaveMyanmar on Twitter.
For the record, in your own country social media activism pales to what you can do just by hitting the pavement and protesting/organizing. But when it comes to foreign countries, you can’t realistically do that. And nobody wants foreign militaries to get involved or sanctions. However, international attention raises the temperature on coup governments which seek legitimacy and tacit approval.
Communication is cut off in the capital of Yangon, so news out of the region may be scarce. If I become aware of a way to donate to a civil disobedience group, I’ll let you guys know.
Yesterday in Bangkok, the protest group WeVolunteer held a sympathy protest outside the Myanmar embassy. Thailand’s military dictator is actually rather chummy with Myanmar’s new would-be military dictator, so there’s a real connection there.
WeVolunteer is the literal vanguard of the movement. We call them the “guards”, because they stand in the front lines against police and are supplied hardhats, etc. to do that. They are mostly vocational students, but that includes a lot of young women.
The protest got to be about 50 people, and movement leader Penguin and progressive party leader Thanathorn made casual appearances.
After about an hour, a group of about 40 police showed up in riot gear, formed a phalanx, and beat protesters back until they were next to the embassy instead of in front of it. I only caught the aftermath live, and the conflict is hard to follow, because footage becomes choppy. Protesters were unarmed, but since they’re the vanguard, they fought back more than usual. Most people dispersed after that, but a group of about ten remained to taunt police and throw bottles.
A reporter on the scene said that one protester was injured and three police. I can’t make out the police injuries in the footage. They could have just been flopping.
I don’t think this is the spark for larger protests to resume. Penguin and Rung are traveling around the country and doing TV. It seems like they plan to wait for Covid to die down. We’re supposed to get the vaccine in July, though we’re actually more than capable of manufacturing it here. It’s common for Thailand to manufacture medical supplies and sell them to other countries, Eve. When there is a domestic shortage. It’s called “corruption”. I believe we’re only allowed to have the vaccine that the king invested in.
I’m cultural politics, those Royalist pundits that were listed from The Nation channel were rejected by numerous other outlets and have now settled on a cable channel you must pay to get.
In Thailand, paying for cable is a huge luxury. This is like if the whole Fox News lineup were now only on Showtime.
The next generation was already overwhelmingly non-royalist. Now brain worms will really be an elite boomer delicacy.
In other news, the king is now apparently going to elevate one of his concubines to the status of a wife. This is rather embarrassing to Royalist, who have to keep arguing that he’s a wonderful morally upright person who deserves to rule all our lives. Imagine if the Romney style Republicans were stuck having to defend Trump. I don’t think Thailand has the same level of delusion and psychopathy as the US. So having a deranged, moronic playboy as your god king is genuinely inconvenient for these people (for whom moralizing about sex and clothing is still a big thing).
I don’t know if it matters in the end, but absolutely nobody has any control over the king, and his followers are having to work harder and harder to rationalize their devotion.
So last night we got the sudden news that four leaders in the democracy movement were having bail hearings for their Le Majeste cases (Law 112: speaking I’ll of the king), months before they were expectes. among them were Penguin–the guy who was basically broken out of jail above–amd Anon the activist lawyer at the iLaw project, which has been the legal backbone of the democracy movement.
Rung, one of the cofounders of the movement, later said she was told the courts were under pressure “from above” to quickly find that these four should not get bail. This would be an unusual finding (courts usually grant bail to make a ridiculous law more palletable), and of course very accelerated. She then said (I think speculatively) that this was an order from the king to end the protest movement before March, because he wanted to go back to his hotel in Germany and forget about it.
As you might imagine, all four activists were denied bail and loaded in a bus to go straight to prison. Normally, it would take about a year to go to trial, and if slow walked it could take years.
So an impromptu protest was called on Twitter by a group I don’t know at the intersection of some malls. It was close to my office, so I was able to run over right after work.
When I got there around 7PM, there were about 200 people gathered around a guy with a microphone. My GF wasn’t with me, so I don’t actually know what he was saying, other than that he mentioned the coup general a lot.
There were a few more speakers and one weird scare when it seemed like about 20 officers were going to try to walk up some stairs to the sky walk where the event was happening. I didn’t really get to see it, but apparently a crowd blocked their path and they gave up. There are, like, 8 entrances/exits to this area, so I wasn’t really scared about escaping, and I think that indicates that the police giving up was an order to back down. There were about five cops hanging out at the protest since its start–but this was probably just their local beat, and they couldn’t do anything against 300 people. This is the power of numbers: police have to “pick their battles”.
I’d say the crowd grew to maybe 250-300, before I left at around 8PM (I was sweating through my work clothes, and I thought it might be winding down). It went on for about another half hour, until Rung, one of the movement founders (who is also charged with 112 but has not had a hearing yet and was also previously imprisoned for three weeks–with dubious legality–before being sort-of sprung by protesters), showed up and gave a closing speech (referenced above).
A larger protest has been scheduled for this afternoon. I packed my basic stuff, and my GF is gonna meet me after work. We’ll see if we’re back down to crowds of 10,000 or if it will be 100,000 again. We’ll see if police come with riot gear. We may see how many pepper spray canons they have left.
Either way, I think the break is over.
Oh hey: my video of the end of tonight’s protest has gone sort-of mini-viral!
Up to 45 followers now. I’m practically a Kardashian!
Anyway, tonight’s protest was a pretty good restart to the movement. My GF forgot her change of clothes at home, and the protest and her home are both an hour from her job in opposite directions, so long story short we ended up getting to the protest location, finding out it had moved, and then only really catching the last half hour. I’m mostly going to be recapping from other people’s Twitters, so in the post after this, I’ll give a timeline of tweets, which might provide more granular detail.
Basically, the goal of the protest is to get the 4 protest leaders denied bail yesterday released on bail. The meeting place was the same as yesterday’s impromptu action (Pathumwan intersection, at the meeting place of the Paragon chain of luxury malls in center city Bangkok). From photos and videos it looks to me like something like 10-15,000 people showed up. Then, 10 people were arrested at the protest, so the action changed focus: they marched to the nearby police precinct and agitated for the 10 arrested protesters to be released. At this point, I believe they were sprayed with teargas from one of the water canons. (Edit: tweets reported “loud bangs”, which suggests teargas canisters, but later I think protesters told me they were sprayed with canons–might have been a language gap miscommunications.) I think some dispersed after that, but as you can see in my video I think about 5-8,000 remained until the end.
Eventually, the arrested protesters were released. Honestly, I’m not sure if they would typically be kept overnight, but obviously it’s very satisfying to immediately free people and show them that the movement has their back.
Tweet Timeline
The publish times that go with these tweets seem a little screwy. Some seem correct and then others have footage from the night with a publish time in the early afternoon. So I dunno. I think I have the order right here: