Bangkok Crackdown Is No Replay of Tiananmen

By ALEXA OLESEN / AP WRITER

Saturday, May 22, 2010

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BEIJING — Before the military crackdown on Red Shirts in Bangkok this week, one Thai protester ominously claimed: "This will end as our Tiananmen Square."

It was a dire warning that did not come true. The clashes Tuesday between the Thai military and the so-called Red Shirt protesters left at least 15 people dead — compared with the hundreds or more believed killed when People's Liberation Army troops stormed into central Beijing in June 1989 to break up student-led pro-democracy demonstrations.

Thai army armored personnel carriers (APCs) guard along the Lumpini Park inside the Red shirt anti-government protesters' camp in Bangkok on May 19. (Photo: Getty Images)

For some, images of Thai armored personnel carriers breaking through makeshift barriers this week to end an anti-government protest brought back memories of China's crackdown in Tiananmen Square two decades ago.

Both were military missions to clear entrenched protestors who had paralyzed a key downtown area in the capital—but the political realities behind the two incidents have little in common, analysts say.

Thailand is a democracy, albeit one now in crisis and long prone to military coups, while China was and is staunchly authoritarian.

"Tiananmen in China in 1989 was really a black-and-white story, a black-and-white confrontation, the authoritarian government with the People's Liberation Army crushing the pro-democracy movement," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

Thailand's protesters are angry because they see their democratic rights are being frustrated: the parties they voted for won the election but were then ordered dissolved and the politicians they voted for were banned from politics.

"In Tiananmen, they didn't have rights. In Thailand, the rights have been usurped, manipulated and disenfranchised," Thitinan said.

The Chinese military's bloody crackdown brought an end to weeks of largely peaceful demonstrations that at their height drew a million people to Tiananmen and saw students erecting a makeshift statue of liberty. In one famous moment of resistance, a lone man holding shopping bags defiantly stood in front of a column of tanks on a street near the square.

Tiananmen's resonance as a clear fight between good and evil was invoked this week by Sean Boonpracong, a spokesman for the Red Shirts.

"The people are defiant," the Guardian newspaper quoted him as saying. "They do not trust the government. They don't want violence, but they are prepared to fight with their bare hands. The government does not want to negotiate, so I think many more people will die. This will end as our Tiananmen Square."

Huang Shan, the international editor of one of China's most daring news publications, Caixin Weekly, said Chinese who grew up during the Tiananmen era would likely have the same associations.

He said he thought immediately of Tiananmen when he heard how the Thai military was clearing the Red Shirts out of downtown Bangkok.

"It's like how they cleared Tiananmen Square in the late 1980s," he said.

Beyond the superficial similarities however lies a world of difference. Tiananmen was a clear battle between dictatorship and democracy, but what's happening in Thailand today is more nuanced and less radical, said William Callahan, professor of international politics at the University of Manchester in England and an expert on Asian politics.

He said the Red Shirts are opposed to the top-down authority of Thailand's "network monarchy," a system which favors wealthy elites with links to the Thai king, but they are not asking for a new political system. Instead they demand new elections, which they hope will bring their people back into power.

"Their stated goals are within the system," he said. "So, they are working within the system but they don't see the system as working very well."

Perhaps the clearest sign of how little the struggles have in common is the free rein Chinese media have been given to report on Thailand's political turmoil. Though Beijing routinely censors news and ideas it considers potentially destabilizing, there seems to be little concern that the chaos in Bangkok will revive the ideals that drove Tiananmen.

Huang, the Caixin Weekly international editor, said so far there's been no gag order from Chinese authorities on covering the Thai crisis. Like other Chinese television and print media, Caixin has reported extensively on the situation and plans to continue doing so, he said.

Li Datong, a veteran Chinese journalist who was forced from a top editing job at a national state-run newspaper for publishing reports that were too probing, said the government is probably allowing plentiful and objective coverage of Thai crisis "because it poses no threat to China."

Thailand today and Tiananmen 20 years ago "were very different situations. In fact, they have nothing to do with each other," Li said. He said the Chinese student demonstrations were spontaneous and largely peaceful while the Red Shirt protests have been relatively organized and sometimes violent.

If anything, he said, the situation in Thailand offers Chinese authorities another negative example, like the occasional fist-fights in Taiwan's rambunctiously democratic legislature, to fend off those clamoring for faster political reforms on the mainland.

"The mouthpieces of the Chinese Central Propaganda Department can point to democracy in Taiwan and democracy in Thailand as cautionary tales," Li said. "They can say: 'You think democracy is good, well have a look at Thailand, see what kind of trouble they've got there?'"

Fresh Political Uncertainties Lie on Thai Political Horizon

Supporters of deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra reacts at the Pheu Thai Party building as Thailand's Supreme Court started reading its ruling on the former leader's wealth, in Bangkok, Thailand, 25 Feb 2010

A Thai Supreme Court verdict last week against former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, accused of abuse of power and concealing his wealth, has eased the political uncertainty that had gripped the country in recent months. But, new uncertainties have emerged as pro-Thaksin supporters vow to mobilize against the government to force new elections, as a way to bring Thaksin back to power.

The long-awaited Supreme Court verdict concerning telecom tycoon and former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra ended months of political uncertainties, amid fears of fresh protests after the verdict's outcome.

Initial reaction by pro-Thaksin supporters has been muted. But threats of protests this month against Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's government adds new concerns to an already troubled political landscape.

In a verdict broadcast Friday on television and radio, the panel of nine judges found Thaksin guilty of concealment of wealth and abuse of power by using his position to benefit family-linked telecommunications business.

The court called for seizure of $1.4 billion, about 60 percent of the more than $2.3 billion of family assets frozen by the state after Thaksin, who was ousted in a coup in 2006.

Thaksin faces a new round of legal cases against him and family members on charges ranging from tax avoidance to perjury.

Chulalongkorn University political scientist Pasuk Pongpaichit says the verdict ended months of uncertainty surrounding Thailland.

"Things are clearer now about what is going to happen to Mr. Thaksin. It would be very difficult for him to return to fight through his supporters here. I suspect that he will not be able to recoup any of these back," she said.

While in power for five years, Thaksin drew his support from urban and rural poor and working class people who benefited from his populist policies of low-cost health care and rural development programs.

But the urban middle and upper class accuse him of abuse of power, attacks on the media and human rights abuses. He has been in exile since 2008 to avoid a corruption verdict in absentia that sentenced him to two years jail.

In Bangkok's working-class suburb, Klong Toey, opinions were divided about the verdict. Public-opinion polls indicate fears of further potential political tension, with a majority calling for Thaksin not to appeal the decision.

Chakra Silapanongchuk, a Bangkok a taxi driver who supported the verdict, said the court ruling proved Thaksin had been corrupt, and how the former leader had used his business knowledge to carry out the corruption.

But others, such as motorbike taxi driver Sompon, said many Thais still support Thaksin, especially those from the pro-Thaskin United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship or UDD, also identified by the group's wearing of red shirts.

Sompon says he believes Thaksin faces many legal hurdles, but he is still loved by many red-shirt supporters. He said Thaksin's Peua Thai Party would win an election over the Democrat Party leader, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

Political economist Pasuk Pongpaichit agrees. She says the verdict will act to draw more 'grassroots' sympathy for Thaksin. "If you go and talk to people at the ground level this verdict has actually increased sympathy to Mr. Thaksin among his supporters. So in other words he has not lost any support. So this political asset in terms of his supporters has actually increased," said Pasuk.

The UDD say it will mobilize protests against Prime Minister Abhisit's government with the goal of forcing the government to resign. Some observers fear violence, while others say it will be a major test for both the UDD's support base and for the government's survival.

Kudeb Saikrajang is a member of the parliamentary opposition Peua Thai Party who believes underlying sympathy for Thaksin triggered by the verdict will draw more people to the protests. "If they can mobilize people and stay for a while, I think the government has to make it clear when they are going, otherwise they cannot rule. Neutral people will ask then what they will do. I think the best way is to dissolve the house; then the government can save face," said Kudeb.

The protests are expected to see a return to the larger street demonstrations that were at the heart of the pro-Thaksin movement in early 2009. In April 2009 protests in Bangkok and a seaside resort where red-shirt protesters crashed a conference hall of regional leaders forcing the gathering to be canceled. Troops were called out to quell the protests.

For the city of Bangkok, questions remain whether fresh street protests will end peacefully or push the government to again use emergency legislation to quell violence.