Thailand

Thailand’s general elections in July could mark a crucial step toward reconciliation but are likely to fuel further resentments that have roiled the country and eroded regional stability, says CFR’s Joshua Kurlantzick.

Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak gives the opening keynote speech at the 10th International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) Asia Security Summit: The Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore June 3, 2011. (Tim Chong/Courtesy Reuters) The annual Shangi-La Dialogue hosted by IISS in Singapore is underway and goes until Sunday. In past years, the Dialogue has proven a major forum for hashing out critical Asian security issues, and often has been a flashpoint for conflict between the U.S. and China. Some issues to watch this year: 1.    Is the U.S. backing off its tough stance on the South China Sea? After two years of increasingly aggressive Chinese posturing on the South China Sea, last summer the Obama administration, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, took a much tougher line on the Sea, warning China that the U.S. considered resolution of any claims to the Sea a core American national interest. China was, unsurprisingly, not happy about Hillary Clinton’s approach, and Beijing has continued its strong-arm tactics, bullying Vietnam, the Philippines, and other claimants this year. But in recent speeches Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell has downplayed any U.S.-China friction over the Sea, instead highlighting the many other areas of potential cooperation between Washington and Beijing. But a number of Southeast Asian nations, including Vietnam, worry that the U.S. no longer has their back, and that the Obama administration’s softer approach will only further embolden Beijing. Look for this to play out further at the Dialogue. 2.    Thailand’s Upheaval Thailand is in the height of election season, and most observers believe that the upcoming poll will only bring further turmoil to the Kingdom, since it is likely to result in either an opposition victory and some kind of military intervention or a Democrat victory brokered by the military and the palace. At the Dialogue, both ASEAN and the United States will have an opportunity to emphasize to Thai participants what their response will be if the military meddles further in Thai politics. 3.    U.S.-China Transition The Dialogue has provided an opportunity for high-level meetings between American and Chinese defense officials, even if in the past those meetings sometimes have turned testy. Outside of the Dialogue and other such forums, military to military relations still remain frighteningly underdeveloped, given the potential for conflict between the U.S. and China over so many issues. But both China and the U.S. are in transition – China to the next generation leadership, and the U.S. to a new Secretary of Defense after the long-serving and highly successful Robert Gates. Will these transitions further complicate military to military relations, which have barely recovered in recent years? At times of transition, neither side can afford such limited military dialogue.

Yingluck Shinawatra is welcomed by her supporters during an election campaign in Chiang Mai province. (Dario Pignatelli/Courtesy Reuters) In the run up to Thailand’s national elections, the opposition Puea Thai Party has repeatedly argued that it is more democratic and more reflective of popular opinion in the country. In some respects, they may be right; current polling suggests Puea Thai is going to win at least a sizeable plurality. Yet the selection of Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin’s younger sister, as the party’s prime minister candidate, is a sign that Puea Thai is hardly as democratic as it seems. Siam Voices has an excellent analysis of this dichotomy. Yingluck is in many ways the most inexperienced prime ministerial candidate in modern Thai history; she has a decent record as a businesswoman and solid academic credentials, but she has no political background, and up until now expressed virtually no political ideas or opinions. Even now, in fact, Yingluck, though a decent speaker, basically just mouths platitudes and simplistic slogans, or simply says that she will be the puppet of Thaksin’s ideas. In other words, Yingluck has ascended to the prime ministerial candidacy because of nepotism. Plain and simple. Now, this may be a wise election move, making the poll about Thaksin, since the former prime minister still enjoys strong support in the north and the northeast, and a referendum on him and his ideas could work for Puea Thai. But it is hard to say that the selection of Yingluck bodes well for the democratic legitimacy of her party.

Anti-government ''red shirt'' protesters wear hats with pictures of toppled premier Thaksin Shinawatra as they pray during a rally at Ratchaprasong intersection at Bangkok's shopping district May 19, 2011. Thousands of "red shirt" protesters staged a rally on Thursday to mark the one-year anniversary of Thailand's worst political violence that ended on May 19 last year. (Damir Sagolj/Courtesy Reuters) One year ago this week, the standoff in Bangkok between the red shirted protestors and the security forces ended in the worst violence in Thailand in at least two decades, with more than eighty people killed, hundreds injured, and even more locked up in jail. A year later, unfortunately, very little has changed. As Human Rights Watch documents in an excellent new report, the most important aspect of reconciliation, some kind of justice for the perpetrators of the violence, has been almost completely absent. Not only human rights groups, but also Thailand’s Department of Special Investigations found that soldiers shot innocent victims, as the Associated Press documents. Yet only the perpetrators of violence from the red shirt side have faced prosecution. To be sure, the red shirts’ armed “men in black” committed serious crimes and should be punished, but so did the security forces. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission established to deal with the events of spring 2010 has also made little headway. Although it has interviewed a number of participants in the events, it has no subpoena power, and has little ability to compel military leaders to appear before it, rendering it all but useless. Meanwhile, the Abhisit government’s crackdowns on opposition websites and radio stations do not exactly add to the feeling of reconciliation. Approaching the new elections, then, Thailand is in just as explosive a place as it was last May. That’s a shame, because with the right mix of policies after last May’s killing, it might have been possible to create a less inflammatory environment before the national polls.

Men atop a truck travel past an election campaign poster showing a candidate for the opposition Puea Thai party posing with ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand's Surin province April 26, 2011. (Sukree Sukplang/Courtesy Reuters) The shooting last week of a Puea Thai member of parliament was a sign that the election campaign for Thailand’s upcoming national poll is likely to be one of the bloodiest and most dangerous in recent history.  Both major parties appear to be engaging in the most inflammatory rhetoric possible, catering to their bases, with the government and the military also using the lèse majesté law to crack down on opposition activists. Puea Thai, meanwhile, seems to be returning to its roots as a vehicle for exiled former prime minister Thaksin. With both sides catering to their hardest-core supporters, the divide in Thai politics is only likely to grow before the election, making any reconciliation afterward almost impossible. That is, if the election actually comes off without military intervention. Any scenario that seems plausible--intervention, a brokered election compromise, any opposition victory--is almost guaranteed to spark more violence.

A Thai national flag flutters in the wind behind a statue of King Rama VII in front of the parliament building in Bangkok, May 10, 2011, ahead of a July 3 election. (Sukree Sukplang/Courtesy Reuters) The New York Times today has extensive coverage of the recent police summons of Somsak Jeamteerasakul of Thammasat University for alleged lèse majesté charges. Now, of course, Somsak’s summons is but one of many of a wave of lèse majesté charges aggressively being pursued by the military and other royalists in the run up to the election being held soon. The trend of summons and arrests has grown from concerning to outright catastrophic for Thailand’s open discourse, which is one reason why the country has plummeted on global rankings of press and Internet freedom. (See, for example, the recent Freedom House report Freedom on the Net 2011.) The question now is at what point this growing lèse majesté crackdown backfires; the Times, and many local blogs and listservs, are beginning to suggest that whatever royalists are gaining from their use of lèse majesté, they are actually costing the monarchy in prestige--especially future prestige once the king has passed away. The more the monarchy is used as a political tool, then conversely, the less it will be seen as above politics, part of its essential appeal to many Thais. The fact that the lèse majesté campaign may have hurt the monarchy’s broader appeal will matter much more once there is a king who has already demonstrated that he does not follow many of the precepts that have attracted Thais to Rama IX, and thus has less personal appeal to draw upon.

A man is dragged after being shot at Rama IV Street during clashes between army soldiers and anti-government 'red shirt' supporters in Bangkok May 15, 2010. (Jerry Lampen/Courtesy Reuters) It has been roughly one year since the bloodshed on the streets of Bangkok last May, which killed at least eighty people, injured hundreds, and set the stage for severe repression in Thailand. For the anniversary, Human Rights Watch has produced the most comprehensive and insightful account of the events of last May, truly a triumph of investigative reporting. It will be interesting to see if the Thai government responds in depth to this report. It shows with significant evidence that both the red shirt protestors and the military used excessive force, but that the army also often operated with minimal command and control and in a largely unprofessional manner.

Thai army tanks travel on a road near the Thai-Cambodia border in Surin province April 28, 2011. (Sukree Sukplang/Courtesy Reuters) A temporary ceasefire in the fighting over the disputed Preah Vihear temple on the Thai-Cambodian border appears to be over. According to multiple news reports, new skirmishes broke out in the past day on the border, where fighting has over the past week already killed sixteen people. After failed meetings between senior ministers, and minimal intervention by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the two countries apparently now are going to go to The Hague for a ruling from the International Court of Justice. Will that help? It’s doubtful. International authorities already have ruled on the case in the past --the ICJ found four decades ago that the temple was under Cambodian sovereignty -- but that has not stopped fighting.  What is needed now is some level of rationality, not from the senior civilian leadership in both countries, but from the armed forces themselves, which, at least in Thailand, operate largely independent of the prime minister’s office, and have utilized the dispute to entrench the army’s central role in political life. Thus far, in fact, the civilian leadership of Thailand, which may well want the dispute to end, seems powerless to do anything about it. Will the two countries’ militaries intervene to stop the senseless fighting? Going to the ICJ is at least a positive step, but unless the civilian governments can gain better control of the armed forces, it is unlikely to produce a true resolution.

Thai soldiers are seen during a visit by Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, following armed clashes on a disputed border area between Cambodia and Thailand, at a makeshift camp in Surin province, 30 km (19 miles) from the Thai-Cambodia border, April 27, 2011. (Sukree Sukplang/Courtesy Reuters) As the conflict between Thailand and Cambodia over the Preah Vihear temple spirals out of control, with fighting now spreading to new locations, outside observers have desperately been trying to cool tempers. Not only Indonesia but also other ASEAN countries, including Vietnam, have been putting pressure on the two sides to back off from the brink. China apparently has applied pressure as well. ASEAN as an organization fears that the continuing dispute will only make it look more feckless than it is often perceived to be – and so Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva apparently will discuss the conflict with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in May in Jakarta. Do not expect any miracles. Key constituencies in both nations are benefiting too much from the border dispute to allow it to die out completely now. As I mentioned yesterday, the Thai army clearly sees the dispute as a way to rally nationalist sentiment and also, most importantly, to entrench the armed forces at the center of national security and political life. In the run-up to what is expected to be a hotly contested national election, keeping in the center of politics will be crucial for the military, and so they are unlikely to abandon the dispute. Cambodia’s key constituencies have just as much reason to prolong the dispute, even though citizens may suffer. (But then, having citizens suffer has never been a major problem for policymakers in Cambodia.) The dispute allows Hun Sen’s oldest son, Hun Manet, to play a larger role in military policymaking, potentially positioning him one day to take over running the country from his father. And the dispute, by fanning nationalist flames in Cambodia as well, distracts from other pressing problems, such as the pending eviction of thousands of poor Cambodians from central Phnom Penh to make way for a development given to a close associate of the prime minister. With Cambodia’s domestic troubles unlikely to disappear, the Preah Vihear dispute probably will not either.

Cambodian soldiers walk at the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple on the border between Thailand and Cambodia February 9, 2011. (Damir Sagolj/Courtesy Reuters) Over the past week, fighting has flared again between Thailand and Cambodia over the disputed Preah Vihear border temple. Already, in the past week, at least thirteen people have been killed in the last week as the two sides have exchanged heavy rifle and mortar fire. Now, this is a tragedy, of course – soldiers and civilians dying over a disputed UNESCO World Heritage Site, and one that has been fought over for decades. But as Bangkok Pundit notes in an interesting blog post, it is important to remember that there is a critical domestic component to this conflict. Thailand is facing national elections within the next two months, and the Thai military, which has over the past five years regained a central role in politics, wants to show that it alone can guard the nation’s security, and so deserves to continue playing that central role, rather than turning over power to real civilian rule. The army has taken other steps recently to cement its power. Army chief Prayuth chan-Ocha increasingly has used the lèse majesté law to attack any government critics, explicitly putting the army in the center of the most important political battles in Thailand. Unfortunately, with Preah Vihear, this attempt by the Thai army is not only damaging Thailand’s reputation but also costing lives.

People use computers at an internet cafe in Wuhan, Hubei province, January 23, 2010. (Stringer Shanghai/Courtesy Reuters) Freedom House this week released its annual report on Freedom on the Net . Overall, despite the buzz about the ways in which social media, VOIPs, and other Internet-related tools have helped facilitate the Arab protests of 2010-2011, the report makes for pretty grim reading, including growing controls on online discourse even in free and developed nations like South Korea, as well as increasingly effective tools of repression deployed by autocratic regimes. Southeast Asia does very poorly on the report. Some countries should not be a surprise: Burma, one of the most repressive nations in the world, comes out badly. But even some of the freer nations in Southeast Asia, like Thailand, rank very poorly: Thailand is rated as “not free” in terms of the Internet, which is the lowest ranking a country can receive. And Malaysia, which has had a vibrant blogosphere even as its print media remained controlled and stodgy, also has begun to turn. Some of Malaysia’s most prominent online writers have grown increasingly scared of government intimidation, and there is fear that the online media will become as constrained as the print and television media.

A Myanmar refugee, who crossed over from Myanmar to Thailand when a battle erupted between Myanmar's soldiers and rebels, carries his relative at the Thai border town of Mae Sot on November 8, 2010. (Chaiwat Subprasom/Courtesy Reuters) According to reports by AFP and other news agencies, Thailand’s National Security Council head, Tawin Pleansri, told reporters after a meeting of the council that Thailand wants to close the refugee camps for over 100,000 Burmese refugees, who have fled the country over the past twenty years. Most of the Burmese refugees live in camps on the western Thailand-Burma border; their housing is basic, but it is better than living in eastern and northeastern Burma, where they are prey to regular campaigns of attacks and even mass rape by the Burmese military, and retribution attacks by armed ethnic militia groups. In one comprehensive report, a group focusing on Chin State in Burma documented the use of rape as a weapon of war by the Burmese military. Thailand has never really wanted to house the Burmese refugees, but over successive administrations Bangkok has tolerated the refugee presence. Undocumented Burmese also frequently enter Thailand itself, providing a source of cheap and easily exploitable labor for many Thai companies. Now, however, Bangkok appears willing to use the fiction that Burma had a real election last fall to repatriate these refugees, most of whom will return against their will. Though the election last year may improve the quality of governance in Burma marginally, it was hardly a free or fair poll, or suggestive of the kind of dramatic change on human rights that would make it safe to return refugees. There are other reasons for Thailand’s suddenly harder line. Leading Thai company Ital-Thai is in the process of making the largest-ever Thai investment in Myanmar, at over $13 billion. And overall, the government of PM Abhisit has tried to foster rapprochment with its neighbor. Too bad that over 100,000 refugees are going to be treated as a pawn in this relationship.

Thai soldiers salute as a coffin of their comrade killed in a recent car bombing is flown home from the troubled Yala province in southern Thailand March 2, 2011. (Damir Sagolj/Courtesy Reuters) In his blog for Reuters,longtime journalist Andrew Marshall offers an excellent examination of why, despite the Thai military’s promises that it has returned to the barracks for good, another coup is hardly out of the question in Thailand. The leaders of the Thai armed forces have in recent weeks been on a publicity campaign, telling any reporter who would listen that there will be no coup, even if the election this summer goes against the ruling Democrat Party, the favorite of the military/royalist/elite establishment. Don’t be so sure. For one, such promises do not mean much: In 2006, not long before the last coup, senior army officers also were publicly promising that the military would not intervene in politics. The army clearly fears that, if the opposition were to win a victory in the elections, it might cashier many senior officers, as former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra had tried to do, and that the opposition cannot be trusted to manage a possible royal succession in the manner that archroyalists want. To try and ensure the outcome they want, military officers have been twisting the arms of small parties behind the scenes to join the Democrat Party in a post-election coalition, if necessary. Still, if that does not work, the army could exercise other options. As Marshall notes, other factors are at work too. The Thai military, like some other Thai elites, views Thailand as a kind of special country, a place where trends in world affairs and international politics somehow do not apply, and which outsiders cannot understand. So, Marshall notes, despite the fact that the post-coup government in 2006 and 2007 was a shambles, incapable of managing Thailand’s sophisticated economy, and the fact that, in the Middle East today, autocrats are showing that they cannot simply call out the troops, murder their people, and expect the international community to stand by, Thailand’s military believes that, if necessary, it could stage a coup, crack down on dissent, and get away with it. Maybe. But Ali Saleh and Muammar Qadaffi might tell them that it’s not so easy anymore.

In this Markets and Democracy Brief, CFR’s Joshua Kurlantzick analyzes Thailand’s democratic failure and offers lessons from the Thai experience for new governments and reformers in the Middle East.

A Cambodian soldier smokes a cigarette at the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple on the border between Thailand and Cambodia February 9, 2011. (Damir Sagolj/Courtesy Reuters) Over the past week, fighting between Thailand and Cambodia over the disputed Preah Vihear border temple has left its bloodiest toll in at least a decade. At least seven people have been killed in recent days and dozens of soldiers on both sides wounded, as the Thai and Cambodian militaries trade rifle and artillery fire. Now, the fact that people are getting killed over a small amount of disputed territory and an (admittedly beautiful) temple does, to many observers, seem absurd. But the conflict also points to a bigger problem: Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva seems to have diminishing control over the Thai military, which is largely responsible for his place in office. On the Thai side, the conflict is being pushed by nationalists linked to the People’s Alliance for Democracy, but the military men taking action along the border often seem to be doing so either without informing Abhisit or informing his office well after the fact. This is part of a disturbing and growing trend. It’s widely known in Thailand that the military helped broker the coalition government, with Abhisit at the head, bringing down several pro-Thaksin governments that followed Thaksin’s exile. But how much control does Abhisit have now over his armed forces? To take one example, the Thai military budget has roughly doubled in the past five years, yet the army is spending its money on seemingly useless projects like a new division based in the Northeast – a project long pushed by the military’s godfather, Prem Tinsulonanda, but which has relatively little real use today. (After all, the money could easily be used in the south, home to a serious insurgency, or on the border with Burma.) Abhisit also appeared to have little control over the military’s actions during the violence in Bangkok during last April and May. And Abhisit seems unable to control the security forces’ meddling in, or denying help to, the investigations into the killings in Bangkok last April and May. Where might this all lead? It’s not hard to imagine, particularly as the question of royal succession becomes more evident and the military increasingly feels it alone can defend the crown. Recently, army chief Prayuth chan-Ocha has been publicly denying that the military plans to stage a coup, as rumors of the possibility swirl in Bangkok. But, remember that only days before the last coup, in 2006, the military was denying it had any such intentions. Don’t bet against it this year either.