Democracy: 2) The 2006 Coup & Robert Amsterdam on “A bloody violent long-term rape”

/ September 20, 2011
  • By Tammy, Thai Intel’s humanity journalist

Many people, who falls victim of rape, falls into silence. The Thai 2006 coup, is nothing but a series of bloody violent long-term rape. And indeed, most of the Thais and the governments around the globe-fell silent-as the Thai establishment raped the Thai people. It took the Red Shirts a great deal of bravery, to stand up against that rape-and struggle, not just for the end of the rape-but also for democracy, justice and human rights.

The following is from Robert Amsterdam

The Thai Coup, Five Years Later, Is Not So “Bloodless”

They called it a “bloodless” coup at the time, as if an act of such violence could ever be without blood. Nobody was injured or killed on the night of 19 September 2006, when the army’s tanks rolled into Bangkok, and rolled over a democracy that had been built piece by piece over decades of tragedies and triumphs.  “Blood” is not just violence, but rather represented in this case by the tearing down of a popularly elected government and the shredding of the 1997 People’s Constitution by a minority using thousands of soldiers and the weapons of war – one of the most violent, uncivil acts imaginable.

The equipment that the soldiers rode and carried into the capital city told a different story. For it is only thanks to a stunned population’s lack of resistance that there was no blood on the pavement that night. As we saw some time later, the troops were ready to fire, should anybody dare to resist the act of unqualified brutality committed by their commanders.

The Thai people were patient with the junta that came to power on 19 September 2006, giving it the benefit of the doubt when it claimed it had not been the military’s intention to topple democracy, or grab more power and money for itself. They stomached the fact that the generals gave themselves immunity, just so the country might be able to move on as a result. They accepted the fact that they would not be able to vote for the Prime Minister they had already elected twice, and had been poised to elect once more, just so they could get to vote again soon. They even went along with a constitution that placed so many hurdles to majority rule, and gave the unaccountable judiciary so much power to make their votes not count, just so they could have their democracy back.

Throughout this time, the Thai people have been exemplary in their willingness to forgive and at the same time their commitment to the democratic process and the rule of law. Their behavior after the coup stands in direct contrast with the vindictiveness and the smallness of those who had overthrown an elected government, and wasted no time trying to make sure that the “democracy” they had promised to rebuild would be nothing more than a sham. It was only in 2008 that the people’s patience snapped. The army’s treachery could be denied no more, when the judicial coups cooked up after the failure of the military coup put the military back in charge, if only behind the pathetic visage of Abhisit Vejjajiva. In Abhisit the military may have found someone willing to justify almost any authoritarian control in the language of law and democracy, but no one was fooled.

As shallow as it was even the day after, five years later it seems positively ridiculous to label the military coup of 19 September 2006 as some form of innocuous removal of a government. Plenty of blood has in fact been spilled since that night, as a result of the military’s resolve to keep the “wrong” people out of power, guarantee that the “right” people get promotions, make money hand over fist thanks to a bulging budget, ensure that no law can be ever be made to apply to men donning a uniform, and keep those who tend to speak their minds too freely locked up in a squalid third-world prison. No amount of blood spilled by the military, however, changed the fact that the coup was a miserable failure. Five years later, we are almost back where we started, with a Shinawatra as Prime Minister and the army lurking in the shadows, in search of an opportunity to topple the elected government.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is in a difficult position. On the one hand she has a strong mandate from the people, who elected her with the expectation that the new government would be able to bring about real change. On the other hand she must tread carefully against the opposition of bureaucrats and soldiers trying to thwart her every move, under an implicit threat that they would not hesitate to remove her. Overcoming these historic roadblocks is not impossible, but is predicated on the willingness of those who support democratic change to continue to unmask those responsible for derailing democracy, follow through on the campaign to free Thailand’s many prisoners of conscience, and persevere in the legal fight to end impunity.

In a book that documents the precursors of our movement, Revolution Interrupted, the brilliant scholar Tyrell Haberkorn writes:

Northern farmers became revolutionaries when they made themselves not only the objects but the subjects of the law, and forced landowners and the State to be accountable to them.

Haberkorn goes on:

It is not the content of the violence against farmers and other dissidents in Thailand in the 1970s that surprises and disturbs me but rather the persistent and collective silence about it 30 years later. In the context of continuous and always shifting repression against those who challenge the accepted order, this silence threatens to become deafening.

The Red Shirt movement has attempted to end that silence for all time by placing a check on the impunity of those who issued the orders to fire upon upon unarmed protesters in cold blood. The election victory of Pheu Thai is only a single step in this long battle to end impunity, and, due to the persistence of certain forces, unfortunately we cannot expect immediate results.

The leadership of the Red Shirts has already made their case clear, and again here I will emphasize: the burden of responsibility is upon us to ensure that there is never again a repetition of the Army’s behavior in 1976, 1992 and 2010, and beyond. This is not only the task of those leaders who have been incorporated at the institutional level through victory at the ballot box, but also the profound and continuing duty of each and every one of us, both inside and outside of Thailand, to refuse this tradition of silence and speak out!

Related articles

Related posts

Leave a comment