Thailand

Darcie Draudt, Will Piekos, and Sharone Tobias look at the top five stories in Asia this week. 1. Japanese prime minister pays his respects to Yasukuni Shrine. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe paid his respects at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including over a dozen “Class A” war criminals. It was the first visit to the Shinto shrine by a serving prime minister since 2006, when Junichiro Koizumi went. Abe tried to play down the visit, saying it was an anti-war gesture, but Abe’s actions were widely and swiftly condemned; the Yasukuni Shrine is seen by the region as a symbol of Imperial Japanese aggression. China called the visit “absolutely unacceptable to the Chinese people”; South Korea expressed “regret and anger”; and the U.S. embassy in Tokyo said in a statement that it was “disappointed” and the prime minister’s actions would “exacerbate tensions” with Japan’s neighbors. 2. Move of U.S. base at Okinawa gains approval. After years of disagreement, Governor Hirokazu Nakaima of Okinawa approved the relocation of the U.S. Marine base on the island to a less populous area. Residents of Okinawa, where about half of the 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan are based, have long complained of base-related crime, noise, and accidents; some protestors still seek the complete removal of U.S. troops from the island. It could take close to a decade to build the new base, which will be located on a landfill. The agreement comes at a crucial time for both Tokyo and Washington, as the former seeks to strengthen ties with the United States amid rising tension with China and the latter continues the U.S. rebalance toward Asia. 3. Satellite images indicate further development at North Korean nuclear plant. A facility for producing fuel rods at Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, north of Pyongyang, now appears to be operational. Last month, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Yukiya Amano said the agency has observed activity at a North Korean nuclear site that indicates effort to restart a reactor. Since April this year, North Korea has repeatedly asserted it is strengthening its nuclear weapon capabilities. The five-megawatt reactor, which was verified to be shut down by IAEA inspectors in July 2007, has previously supplied sources of plutonium, a component for nuclear weapons. Though IAEA has not had access to the site since North Korea banned IAEA inspectors from entering in October 2008, the IAEA continues to monitor the Yongbyon plant via satellite imagery. 4. Protesting garment workers and police clash in Cambodia. Violence broke out between police and protesters in the capital Phnom Penh on December 27, as military police attempted to move the striking workers. Police fired warning shots into the crowd, which incited the protesters to throw rocks in response; about ten police officers and ten protesters were injured. Thousands of garment factory workers have been protesting nationwide for weeks, upset by inadequate minimum wages. Unions have demanded a raise to $160 minimum monthly wage, but the national government decided to raise the minimum wage for the garment and shoe industry to $95 (a 19 percent increase on the status quo). In addition to calling for increased wages, the striking workers have joined the Cambodian opposition movement that demands the resignation of Prime Minister Hun Sen. 5. Thai election body calls for delayed vote amid violence. The Election Commission of Thailand is urging the country’s February 2 vote to be postponed as protests and chaos continued to grip Bangkok. One police officer was killed and dozens injured on Thursday in the first violent incidents in almost two weeks. Protestors were trying to stop election preparations, as the current government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra most likely will win another term; the protestors’ ultimate goal is her resignation and the establishment of an unelected “people’s council.” The government has rejected the proposed postponement, citing concerns that it could lead to “prolonged violence.” Bonus: Rodman visits North Korea, but doesn’t see Kim Jong-un. Retired NBA player Dennis Rodman wrapped up his third visit to North Korea this week, during which he trained North Korean basketball players and helped plan a proposed exhibition game in early 2014, allegedly coinciding with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s birthday celebrations. He did not, however, see the supreme leader this time, whom he has previously called a “good friend” while distancing himself from the issues dealing with security, politics, or human rights in North Korea.  Rodman’s corporate partner, the Ireland-based online betting site Paddy Power, announced on December 23 it would no longer support Rodman or his planned game, citing increased international concern over the North Korean regime. Likewise, the U.S. Department of State has distanced themselves from Rodman’s “basketball diplomacy.”

As Thailand heads into the new year, which will mark four months of political crisis, one of the most persistent—and dangerous—concepts in Thai politics remains this idea that Thailand is somehow unique. According to this popular theory, Thailand’s history, politics, and potential political solutions are completely unique, untethered from the experiences of any other developing nations. This Thailand-as-unique narrative clearly comes across in the rhetoric of the anti-government protest movement and its quest for rule by a few good men, in the weakness of studies of comparative politics in the kingdom, and in the denunciation of foreign academics and journalists who write about Thailand. Overall, the Thailand-as-unique narrative can be seen in the general reluctance of many Thai opinion leaders on both red and yellow sides to admit that many of the country’s problems do bear a strong resemblance to those of many of Thailand’s neighbors. (New Mandala had a fine short summary of the anger expressed against foreign journalists in Thailand.) Thai politics contain some unique aspects. The country is a constitutional monarchy that does not really function like a constitutional monarchy, and one where the limitations of the monarch are not really clearly defined. It has had more military coups than almost any other middle-income nation, and it retains a “coup culture” (the term of Australian National University professor Nicholas Farrelly) that has largely vanished from most other middle-income developing nations. But in many ways, Thailand is not so unique, and there are lessons to be learned from other democratizing nations—once Thai opinion leaders get beyond the idea of Thai uniqueness. Many countries have made a gradual transition to democracy only to find that some segments of the middle class and elite dislike the shift in power engendered by democratization, and look to extra constitutional means of subverting democracy. In countries like Spain, for instance, remnants of the military/bureaucratic/business elite repeatedly tried to bring down elected governments in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But as King Juan Carlos and other top military leaders repeatedly stymied coups and other interventions, it became accepted that coups were no longer feasible in Spain, and most elites reconciled themselves to democratic politics. The Thai army’s reluctance, during this round of political protests, to consider an extra constitutional intervention, bodes well for a future in which resorting to coups as a means of subverting democracy is no longer acceptable in Thailand as well. Similarly, other countries in the region have made a gradual transition toward building trusted formal institutions of conflict mediation and away from having disputes mediated by informal institutions gathered around one or two top leaders, as was common in Suharto’s Indonesia and has been the case with Thailand’s network monarchy for years. Indonesia slowly has built a more stable and trusted court system, and more trusted institutions designed to monitor elections and address potential electoral fraud. Poorer than Thailand, and in many ways far more divided and harder to govern, Indonesia nonetheless has created reasonably stable formal institutions, allowing politics to be channeled through a system, and no longer through the hands of a small handful of men and women. Right now Thailand’s political future seems grim, and January almost surely will bring more violence in Bangkok; yesterday someone firebombed the home of prominent anti-government protest leader and former Democrat Party spokeswoman Chitpas Bhirombhakdi. But if Thai opinion leaders can move beyond their myopia, and admit that Thailand is not actually so special, they can see that, in the long term, there are many other examples to offer them hope.

When I first moved to Thailand, in 1998, the Democrat Party, the oldest continuously-operating party in the kingdom, was in control of the government and was navigating Thailand through the economic reforms necessitated by the Asian financial crisis, which started in Thailand the previous year with the collapse of the baht. Although some of the reforms were unpopular, and the country was hurting badly from the baht’s fall, the collapse of many financial institutions, and the sudden halt in construction, I admired then-Democrat Party leaders like Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai for their willingness to take on hard economic reforms. I also admired many of them for championing Thailand’s 1997 constitution, the most reformist in the kingdom’s history, a landmark document that enshrined a wide range of rights. Many of my friends in Bangkok at that time—journalists, civil society activists, lawyers, and others who had been involved in the democracy movement since the 1970s—supported the Democrat Party and viewed it as the cleanest and most coherent party in the country. To be sure, there were plenty of political hacks, vote-buyers, and other dark forces operating in the Democrat Party—the Party’s get-out-the-vote operation and political maneuvering in Parliament were managed by Sanan Kachornprasart, then the ultimate Thai political godfather. But Chuan was regarded as personally clean, and the Democrats had a bench of younger politicians and advisers who also appeared altruistic and committed to liberal democracy. Since then, the Democrat Party’s commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and Thailand’s future has collapsed. There are still within the party some quality politicians, like Bangkok governor Sukhamband Paribatra, but since the Thai rural working and middle class has become more empowered, the Democrats have become increasingly conservative, elitist, and anti-democratic. This strategy has not helped them win elections, and neither has their incoherent policy positions—they had denounced the populist parties of Thai Rak Thai/Puea Thai but, when running for Parliament in 2011, the Democrats essentially copied these policies. Now, by resigning from Parliament en masse to join street protests designed to foment anarchy and topple the government, rather than trying to win power through elections, the Democrat Party has reached new lows. (Thomas Fuller has an excellent summary of the situation in here.) The party now seems to exist primarily to work against democratic institutions, and undermine democratic culture. A sad change in fifteen years.

Darcie Draudt, Will Piekos, and Sharone Tobias look at the top stories in Asia this week. 1. White House declares China’s East China Sea air defense zone (ADIZ) “unacceptable.” The White House called China’s new air defense zone “unacceptable” on Thursday but stopped short of calling for China to rescind the declaration. Imposed on November 23, the ADIZ means that all aircraft must report flight plans to Chinese authorities and reply promptly to identification inquiries. The United States, Japan, and South Korea have all sent military aircraft through the zone without informing Beijing since it was first imposed. U.S. vice president Joe Biden said that he had “very direct” talks about U.S. concerns over the ADIZ while meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping this week. The ADIZ includes the contested Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, which are controlled by Japan but claimed by China. (Japan and South Korea have similar zones, but only aircraft planning on entering sovereign airspace are required to declare themselves.) Three major U.S. airlines said that they were complying with Chinese government demands. 2. China cracks down on foreign press. Also during his visit, Vice President Biden criticized China’s recent crackdown on foreign journalists, saying, "We have many disagreements, and some profound disagreements, on some of those issues right now, in the treatment of U.S. journalists." The Chinese government has not renewed visas for nearly two dozen correspondents from the New York Times and Bloomberg News after articles exposed the wealth of some of China’s top leaders. The journalists will be forced to leave China by the end of 2013 if the visas are not renewed. Last year, American correspondent for Al Jazeera English Melissa Chan was the first foreign journalist to be expelled from China in thirteen years, which reversed a previous promise by Beijing to open China to more foreign journalists as a condition for hosting the 2008 Olympics. 3. A tentative peace struck in Bangkok. The capital of Thailand, wracked by a week of protests against the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, calmed on December 4 in preparation for the eighty-sixth birthday of King Bhumibol Adulyadej the next day. Anti-government protests peaked on December 2, and police have used concrete and barbed wire barriers and tear gas to quell the demonstrations—four have died and over one hundred have been injured in the violence. The opposition, led by former politician Suthep Thaugsuban, has rallied behind an attempt by Prime Minister Yingluck to pass an amnesty bill that would absolve her older brother and former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, of the corruption and abuse of power charges that forced him into self-imposed exile. Despite the lull in protests and violence, Suthep has vowed to continue his efforts to bring down the democratically elected government. 4. Japan approves Abe’s economic stimulus package. In the latest effort to combat Japan’s twenty-year deflation trend, Japan’s cabinet approved a 18.6 trillion yen ($182 billion) economic package on December 5. Proponents contend that the package will override a drop in spending ahead of the tax hike. The package includes 5.5 trillion yen of spending measures ordered by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in October in anticipation of a sales-tax hike that is planned for April 2014; however, the timeline for the rollout is still dubious and some charge that some of the projects may not start until July or later. Additionally, some market participants charge that some of the items were previously scheduled, such as reconstruction from the 2011 earthquake, and do not constitute true economic policy to strategically combat the continued downturn in the Japanese economy. 5. Satellite imagery reveals scale of North Korean political prison camps. On December 5, Amnesty International released satellite imagery of two growing political prison camps in North Korea. Amnesty International commissioned the images from DigitalGlobe, a commercial satellite imagery vendor. The images accompany a written report given to the UN Commission of Inquiry on human rights abuses in North Korea, which is set to submit a report to the UN Human Rights Council in March 2014. According to defector testimony , imprisoned North Koreans are tortured, starved, raped, and killed at the camps, or kwalliso. Based on the imagery, Amnesty estimates that Kwalliso 15 in South Hamgyeong Province houses 50,000 people, and Kwalliso 16 in North Hamgyeong Province holds 20,000 people. Kwalliso 16 is 560 square kilometers—three times the size of Washington, DC. The North Korean government denies the existence of the prison camps. Bonus: China in the Catskills. U.S. immigration officials are considering an application by a group of Chinese investors to build a 600-acre “China City in America” in upstate New York. The proposal, which includes family housing, a college, offices for every Chinese province, and possibly a casino, has been criticized as “a stalking horse for the Chinese communist government in Beijing.” The project calls for 20 percent of the capital to come from U.S. federal funding and would give green cards to foreign investors who provide at least $500,000.

Over the past week, Thailand’s political unrest has descended into serious, chaotic violence. On Monday and Tuesday, protesters entered the grounds of both police headquarters and Government House, having already occupied other ministries. Despite a short truce to observe the king’s 86th birthday on December 5, the conflict is likely to start up again, since protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban has vowed to keep on, and the deep divides in Thai society remain. In a new article for BloombergBusinessweek, I analyze why Thailand’s democracy has been so fragile, and why the country is so addicted to extraconstitutional interventions. You can read the whole piece here.

Over the weekend, Thailand’s political unrest, which was already sliding downhill last week, took a turn for the worse. Clashes between anti-government demonstrators, pro-government demonstrators, police, and unidentified thugs resulted in four dead and dozens wounded over the weekend, and the police’s use of force was a blow to the Yingluck Shinawatra government’s promise to use non-violent measures to disperse protests. (The police have used tear gas, some other kind of burning gas, and, according to some media reports, rubber bullets.) The demonstrators show no sign of backing down, even following a meeting between Prime Minister Yingluck and the main protest leader, former Democrat Party politician Suthep Thaugsuban. Suthep has given the government a two-day ultimatum to hand over power. Demonstrators have ignored calls by the government to stay indoors at night and to call off their strikes. It is likely that, whatever kind of head is going to come to this conflict, it will come before December 5, the birthday of Thailand’s revered king. What’s more, the fact that Thailand’s military already has become involved in the crisis, trying to mediate between politicians and moving out to points around the city, is not a good sign for a peaceful resolution by civilians. The best possible move by Yingluck would be to call a new election. Although, as many commentators have noted, a new election probably would be boycotted by at least some of the opposition—Suthep already has said he is trying to eliminate the “Thaksin regime” root and branch and not contest a new election—a new election would serve several purposes for Yingluck’s government. Puea Thai would almost surely win a new election, and this victory would add legitimacy to Yingluck’s position both in Thailand and around the world. In addition, although Suthep has declared he wants an unelected “people’s” government (an idea that is laughable, given who Suthep is), an election might peel some supporters from the anti-government protests and lead to some opposition politicians also being peeled off. Still, it seems like Yingluck is unlikely to call a new election, and so it is becoming more and more probable that Thailand is heading to a major crisis and an extraconstitutional intervention. The United States, along with China, is the most important partner of Thailand; Thailand is a treaty ally and a major non-NATO ally, and the U.S. response to any crisis in Bangkok carries significant weight with all sides of the Thai political spectrum. Thus, Washington should, even before December 5, make it clearer to all sides of the Thai political spectrum that the United States will take a much harder line against an extraconstitutional intervention than it has done in the past. I’ll discuss the specifics of a U.S. response in my next post.

Over the weekend, Thailand’s unrest, centered in Bangkok, only went from bad to worse, with at least four people killed over the weekend, the anti-government demonstrations showing no sign of ending, and the country lurching closer to riots or a military intervention. In a piece for BloombergBusinessweek, I analyze why Thailand seems stuck in a perpetual cycle of political unrest, with no apparent solutions. Read the whole piece here.

Today marks the second day of  Bangkok protestors’ occupation of several of Thailand’s major ministries. Although so far there has been minimal violence, by Thai standards, demonstrators yesterday physically attacked one of the finest photojournalists in Thailand, Nick Nostitz, in a particularly galling and sad move, and they also threatened to attack other onlookers and reporters. But more broadly, the occupation of ministries, abetted by several former senior members of the Democrat Party, is a clear escalation of the demonstrations.  (Can one imagine the U.S. government or another democracy in Europe allowing protesters to just take over major ministries?) These protests started out as demonstrations against the proposed amnesty law, but that bill has now been withdrawn. The real purpose of the protests, to get rid of the government and—they hope—the Shinawatra family from politics, has now been revealed. The occupation also is the next step in a tried-and-true game that has played itself out over and over again in Thailand over the past decade; the tactics clearly resemble those of yellow shirt protesters back in 2008, when they occupied Bangkok’s major airport and paralyzed commerce in and out of the city. Yellow shirt protesters want to paralyze policymaking, and paralyze Bangkok and—by extension—all of Thailand, since Bangkok is so dominant over every aspect of Thailand’s economy and politics. The demonstrators hope to draw the government, which already made a huge mistake by trying to ram through the amnesty bill, into making another mistake like using unnecessary force to clear demonstrations and thus looking like an authoritarian regime. Indeed, protesters constantly refer to the “Thaksin regime,” although most academics and other analysts would only apply the word “regime” to an unelected government, whether or not that elected government was venal or ineffective. The protests have a real chance of working, at least in the short-term; in the long-term the demonstrators still have no vision for how to move Thailand toward a liberal democracy in which both the will of voters (even, yes, poor people who vote!) and the rule of law are upheld. The protest-as-paralysis strategy worked in the late 2000s against the previous iteration of Puea Thai, undermining the government’s legitimacy and ultimately paving the way for the Democrat-led coalition to take over Parliament, albeit without winning any elections. Perhaps the Yingluck administration will find some way out of this tight situation, perhaps by using the leverage it has gained with the military to keep the army out of it, calling a new election and winning it, and not using anything more than nonviolent crowd control while simultaneously negotiating an end to the ministry occupation. But I doubt it. I doubt that this situation will de-escalate peacefully and without the intervention of other actors. The past decade shows that Thailand’s leaders currently are incapable of de-escalating once these types of street protests cross a certain line. Like Nicholas Farrelly at New Mandala, I suspect that, even if the Thai government holds for a short period of time, Thailand is headed for another extraconstitutional intervention—a coup, a major judicial intervention, or something else.

Today Thailand time, after not only the opposition Democrats but also many members of her own coalition expressed fury at Thailand’s proposed amnesty bill, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s government finally abandoned the legislation. The government announced that it will not seek to keep the bill alive if Thailand’s Senate rejects it later this week, as is now expected. Many senators already have come out and said they will reject the controversial amnesty bill, making it likely a majority of the Senate will vote it down—a shocking turn of events, since Yingluck normally has de facto control of the upper house and most analysts (including me) expected she would be able to ram the bill through the Senate. Street protests against the amnesty law have been growing, leading up to what would have been (and may still be) massive demonstrations this weekend in Bangkok. Many of the MPs in Yingluck’s own party had been extremely uncomfortable with the amnesty legislation, since they had participated in the 2010 Bangkok street protests during which security forces opened fire repeatedly on protesters with live rounds, killing at least ninety people. Several of these MPs had been fired at themselves while in the demonstrations, or had friends or relatives who had been killed or injured in 2010. Although Yingluck had whipped the party into line to support the legislation, in a pre-dawn vote in the lower house Friday, this was a temporary measure. Dissent had already this week begun to trickle out from within Puea Thai, and as we moved toward the weekend, internal party frustration was likely to be aired even more openly, betraying cracks in what, from the outside, looked like an extraordinarily disciplined party, by Thai standards. Still, Yingluck (and Thaksin’s) refusal for so long to see the enormous flaws in the amnesty law—that it would have whitewashed almost a decade of abuses by security forces and political leaders just to allow Thaksin to return to Thailand—was extremely surprising. Though he desperately wants to return, Thaksin also always has been known to have the best political instincts in Thailand, to understand what he can and cannot do at any time. Despite having little experience in politics before being elected prime minister two years ago, Thaksin’s sister, up to now, had demonstrated astute political sense as well during her term in office. Yet Yingluck continued to defend the amnesty up to the last minute it seemed possible to pass, she forced her MPs to vote for it last Friday, and she seemed unable to understand why the legislation was so anathema to many Thais. Perhaps she still does not understand—until Wednesday she and Thaksin were still defending the legislation—but rather has simply faced political realities.  

Like classic adversaries in a game of brinkmanship who lose control and then have no choice but to follow through on their threats, Thailand’s two major opposing political groupings now have gone too far to retreat. On Friday the Puea Thai Party pushed the controversial amnesty bill through the lower house of Parliament, with Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra reportedly calling in all Puea Thai MPs and telling them they had to vote for the bill, even though some had reservations about how it provides amnesty for security forces involved in killing red shirt protesters in Bangkok in 2009 and 2010. Today, the bill will almost surely pass the Senate. The prime minister was warned many times in recent months—by red shirt members of Parliament, by foreign observers, by several Thai academics—that the amnesty bill would not only simply whitewash human rights abuses going back to the 2006 coup, a reason that on its own would make excellent cause to toss the legislation in the bin. Many warned Yingluck that the bill made bad political sense for her as well:  Ramming the legislation through Parliament would give the opposition—which had been unable to gain traction against Yingluck, has not won control of Parliament in an election since the 1990s, and has little idea how to change to appeal to rural, working class Thai voters—a real issue to rally around for the first time. The opposition Democrats, and various Bangkok-based, middle/upper class groups allied with the Democrats, have been holding anti-government rallies on and off since virtually the day Yingluck was elected in 2011. At one point, the demonstrators donned Guy Fawkes masks—inspired by the film V for Vendetta—to protest the government’s supposed corruption and disregard for the monarchy, apparently not realizing that Guy Fawkes was not exactly a noted monarchist. But most of the protests, until now, have drawn only a few hundred people at most, the same hard core that refused to accept that a democratic Thailand meant a shifting political climate. But the prime minister paid no heed to counsel, and now has pushed the amnesty bill through, making it seem that she was willing to forgive all the abuses committed by security forces, as long as her brother Thaksin would be cleared by the amnesty and could return to Thailand. Now, she essentially has offered the opposition the chance to draw far larger street protests, protests they clearly hope will cause chaos in Bangkok and, potentially, paralyze and even bring down the Yingluck government—as similar protests helped bring down the previous iteration of Puea Thai in 2009.  Today, the opposition has reportedly drawn over 10,000 people into the streets to demonstrate against the amnesty legislation, and several opposition legislators have resigned from Parliament to participate in protests and try to create as much havoc as possible. Though the Democrats usually draw significant electoral support from Bangkok, they seem unworried that their demonstrations could shut down the city and potentially cause serious property damage. So, Thailand now has returned to the dangerous street politics that have plagued it since 2006, leading to reprisals upon reprisals, protests after counterprotests. Neither the prime minister nor the opposition looks ready to blink.  

Although Thailand’s monarchy is, other than the few remaining traditional monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Brunei, probably the most powerful royal family in the world, it has been the subject of very few serious written works. This lack of real analysis and insight into the royal family is hardly surprising: Thailand’s lese majeste laws are the strictest in the world, even the most oblique references to the royal family can land you in jail in Bangkok, and it’s not exactly easy to find sources in the extended royal family to go on the record. Prosecutions under the lese majeste law have skyrocketed in the past decade, according to scholar David Streckfuss, because the law increasingly has been used as a weapon by various political sides in Thailand, and even by people who just have a vendetta against an associate. (In one infamous case, a man charged his brother with lese majeste, though the case eventually was dismissed after it became apparent that this was simply a situation of family acrimony.) The best book in English on the modern Thai monarchy remains The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand’s Bhumibhol Adulyadej, published in 2006 by journalist and longtime Thailand resident Paul Handley. Writing the book essentially guaranteed Handley he could not return to Thailand. Other books, in English and Thai, touch on important aspects of the modern-day monarchy, or contain valuable information buried inside what is essentially a hagiography—books like King Bhumibhol Adulyadej: A Life’s Work, released last year. Now, many Thailand-watchers are eagerly expecting a book that could add to this small shelf of insight into the royal family. Andrew MacGregor Marshall was a journalist in Southeast Asia for Reuters until he quit the company to publish a long-form article, based on first-hand reporting and on a stash of Wikileaks cables relating to the Thai monarchy; the article attempted to explode many of the myths about Thailand’s current king, normally referred to in Thailand as a benevolent, godlike figure. Although some of Marshall’s writing was not always as revelatory as he made it out to be—academics had discussed some of the themes in his work—his sourcing and many juicy tidbits made the piece a captivating read. It also seemed to have gained Marshall more sources in Thailand, and specifically in the royal family, even though he now lives in Singapore and cannot return to the kingdom. Marshall apparently is now going to publish a book that examines Thailand’s current political divide not through the lens of class conflict or democratization but through the lens of conflict over Thailand’s royal succession. Although this broader theme is not new, the initial draft of the book contains insights and many reported details about the monarchy—details that are almost impossible to find. The draft is here.

Thailand, which has gone through one political crisis after the next for nearly a decade now, appears poised for more political turmoil. Most of the factors that have caused previous periods of unrest are now locking into place once again. The ruling Puea Thai Party, though democratically elected, has taken its mandate as a license to operate like an elected dictatorship, and now is trying to push through parliament a misguided, potentially damaging amnesty law. The law, as Human Rights Watch notes in a summary, would prevent prosecutions of nearly everyone involved in political protests and counterprotests in Thailand in recent years. The amnesty would apply to members of the security forces who killed at least seventy protesters in Bangkok in 2009 and 2010 and the leaders of the government at that time who oversaw these massacres.  The law also potentially would make it easier for the return to Thailand of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the leader—though in exile—of the Puea Thai party and a potent symbol to Thailand’s rural voters, who have continued to back Thaksin and his party for more than a decade. With the law, Thaksin could potentially return to Thailand without having to face any accountability for his time as prime minister, when he oversaw a “war on drugs” that led to thousands of unaccounted for deaths, or any accountability for corruption charges that were laid against him after he was deposed from office. The amnesty bill is opposed by many of the same groups that have attacked Thaksin and Thaksin’s parties for nearly a decade—a coalition that includes royalist and right-wing Bangkok-based groups, several elite media organizations and, possibly, many in the Bangkok bureaucracy and in the armed forces. This loose coalition, mostly comprised of middle and upper-class Bangkokians, has little concept of democracy either. Its members seem committed to using the amnesty law as a pretext to hold public protests in Bangkok that would potentially shut down the city’s functioning and, possibly, lead to further violence. Some 10,000 protesters are expected in Bangkok later this week. A similar coalition took over Thailand’s main international airport in 2008, all but shutting down the economy for a time, and creating chaos; yet, their methods were rewarded as they helped bring down the pro-Thaksin government at that time. As in previous Thai political confrontations, compromise—supposedly a trait that Thai politicians excel in—is in short supply. As Human Rights Watch notes, “The government and members of parliament from the ruling coalition … have disregarded recommendations—including from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights—to clearly specify for which actions an amnesty will be granted, and to ensure that those who used violence or committed rights abuses will not be protected from criminal prosecution.” Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra allegedly has told members of her party that they must vote, party-line, in parliament for the amnesty bill, giving no quarter. Similarly, the group of royalist, right-wing protesters is giving no ground. Rather than holding peaceful protests and creating an organization to monitor the government and criticize the amnesty bill, the protesters are becoming more and more aggressive, as they did in the airport seizure. And why not? As both sides of the Thai political divide have seen over the past decade, compromise delivers little results in Thailand today, while force and political extremism ultimately can work—at least for one side, for a short while. Meanwhile, the once-stable political system continues to disintegrate.

The Thai government recently announced that its peace talks with several representatives of the southern Thai insurgents have been postponed indefinitely. As Anthony Davis notes in an excellent piece on Asia Times, this step was hardly a surprise; since Ramadan, when there was supposed to be a temporary cease-fire, violence has once again surged in the south, while Army Commander in Chief Prayuth Chan-ocha has ordered forces in the south to take more aggressive measures. The meaning of the aggressive measures order became clear when Thai forces tracked down and then shot and killed one insurgent commander in early October. In response, over the past two weeks the insurgents have launched a string of attacks. As Davis notes, the insurgents have had little trouble placing bombs right in the middle of key towns in the south, and at major targets that one would think would be better protected. But this peace process, though laudable in some ways, was probably doomed from the start. The Yingluck government should be applauded for just sitting down with any insurgents, and for broaching topics like offering some degree of autonomy to the southern provinces. On the other hand, it has been clear almost since the beginning of the talks that Thailand’s interlocutors on the insurgent/BRN-C (Barisan Revolusi Nasional-Coordinate) side, like BRN-C member Hasan Taib,  have little say over the actions of fighters on the ground. The BRN-C leaders at the peace table could not really even enforce the Ramadan ceasefire, and the Thai government was not committed to the ceasefire either. Perhaps the end of this round of talks could actually lead to something constructive. As longtime south observer Don Pathan writes, not only does Taib have little credibility, the fact that the Thai government is not outlining credible ways to end the violence on the army/rangers/armed pro-government gangs side, and has used the talks as mostly just “talks about talks,” is not enticing other, more influential leaders than Taib to join the peace talks. The break in talks could be an opportunity for Bangkok to create a new round of negotiations—ones with a clearer endpoint, and with a more tangible set of carrots for insurgents. With a better negotiating process, Bangkok just might lure more powerful insurgents to the table.

Since the middle of this summer, emerging markets, particularly in Asia, have witnessed massive sell-offs of their bonds, enormous slides in their stock markets, and investors dumping their currencies as fast as they can. Many Asian and foreign analysts of Asian nations now worry that the easy credit masked huge problems in the foundations of emerging economies, and that Asia could witness an economic and financial crisis similar to the devastating meltdown that crushed the region in the late 1990s. This time, such a crisis would be even tougher for the world to withstand: emerging markets are far larger than they were 15 years ago, and a crisis in Asia could take down the entire international economy. Read more of my piece on the emerging markets crisis and the potential global economic recession here.  

In an excellent new piece on Voice of America (VOA) news, Steve Herman analyzes how several nations in Southeast Asia appear to be moving to “emulate China” in the way that these countries, like China, regulate and harshly restrict social media. In Thailand, for example, which has one of the harshest climate for Internet speech in the world—despite being theoretically a democracy—the government is now moving to crack down on Facebook users who just post or “like” any articles that could be deemed insulting to the Thai monarchy. Unlike in most other countries that still have lèse-majesté laws on the books, Thailand actually enforces its  lèse-majesté laws, and anyone—not just the king, queen, and other royals—can file a lèse-majesté charge against anyone else in Thailand. As a result, the  lèse-majesté law has become an oppressive tool of political repression by all sides in Thailand’s never ending political drama. As VOA notes, a well-known Thai journalist, Sermsuk Kasitipradit, is now being questioned by police for some of his Facebook postings. Senior Thai officials also have publicly warned that simply “liking” something on Facebook that could be deemed offensive to the monarchy will result in potential prosecutions under lèse-majesté and computer crimes laws. Similarly, Vietnam just passed a  new law, Decree 72, which apparently prohibits people from posting news articles on social media or blogs. Vietnam’s new law requires any posts on social media to be related only to personal information. There is little doubt that the Vietnamese authorities will enforce the new laws on social media; over the past four years, Vietnam already has been engaged in one of the harshest crackdowns in the world on bloggers posting items on politics, land grabbing, or other sensitive issues. Are Thailand, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian countries just emulating China’s restrictions on social media? Or is there a more direct connection? Vietnam routinely sends senior officials to China to learn about many aspects of Chinese governance, including Internet monitoring and control. So, it is not unreasonable to assume that officials in Vietnam have modeled their social media strategy directly on tactics learned in China. Similarly, Thai officials have traveled on several occasions to China to study the way China monitors and controls social media and microblogging, so—again— it’s not unreasonable to think that Thailand is modeling its policy on tactics Thai officials have personally seen in China.