With leaders rounded up and soldiers deployed in their rural heartlands, Thailand’s Red Shirts have gone to ground, but experts say they will regroup against the military’s toppling of the government they helped elect.
The red-clad street protest movement, established in the wake of a 2006 coup to rally support for ousted Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has warned that the kingdom’s long-running political conflict could descend into civil war.
The Red Shirts say they have been hit hard by a crackdown since Royal Thai Army Commander-in-Chief Prayut Chan-ocha deposed the Thaksin-allied government on Thursday last week and seized wide-ranging powers.
Several Thai activists said they have been hemmed in by a big army presence, detentions and closures of influential local radio stations used to spread their pro-Thaksin message.
“There are no leaders,” said Aporn Sarakham, a former Thai senator and the wife of Kwanchai Pripana, a hardline Red Shirt from northeastern Thailand detained by the army on Friday.
The movement’s hierarchy — from the firebrand protest leaders to local village heads — are being held or harassed or have gone to ground to avoid detention.
“The Red Shirts do not know what to do... We have to wait and see what the army does and what our leaders in other provinces and districts say,” Amnuay Boontee, a Red Shirt coordinator in Buriram Province, said by telephone.
Telephone lines have also been cut, the activists said. Calls to several other leading Red Shirts could not be connected.
“In our hearts, we are against the coup, but people are scared. All of our leaders are detained,” a Red Shirt leader requesting anonymity said. “People are sitting and talking about it, but things are quiet.”
Thaksin still draws strong support in northern Thailand for his populist policies, such as nearly free healthcare, micro-loans and generous rice subsidies that satisfied the Red Shirts’ burgeoning political and economic aspirations.
Parties led or aligned with Thaksin have won every completed election since 2001, most recently in 2011 under his younger sister, former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra.
While the Red Shirts may for now be cramped by martial law, observers say they are likely to regroup in coming months. They foresee protests, road blocks and moves to cripple Thai provincial governments.
Attacks by armed militant cells and a crescendo of calls for a parallel government — a direct challenge to the army’s writ over the country — could also be on the cards.
“The chance of violence is very strong,” said Kan Yuenyong, executive director of the Siam Intelligence Unit think tank. “I don’t expect we will have a kind of civil war yet, but we will see a kind of insurgency or random violence in different areas.”
An analysis by IHS Country Risk said there was a “real risk” of Red Shirt paramilitaries attacking opposition-linked commercial assets in central Bangkok.
They were also likely to block road access to various districts of the capital.
“The Red Shirts’ strategy could center around supporting a retreat by leaders of the deposed ... government to their strongholds to effectively control swathes of the north and northeast, with the military controlling Bangkok and the south,” according to the analysis.
Soldiers were deployed over the weekend at anti-coup rallies in Chiang Mai — the northern home town of the Shinawatra family.
A local police source said more than 10 people had been arrested there.
Elsewhere, the army said it had arrested more than 20 people allegedly intent on a “large-scale attack” in Khon Kaen, one of the largest northeastern cities.
An army spokesman said the suspects were arrested with bombs and hundreds of bullets.
Over the weekend small, sporadic, but vociferous anti-coup rallies took place across Bangkok, although the army chief on Monday threatened to take action against protesters and even their families under martial law.
Antipathy toward the establishment-backed army runs deep among the Red Shirts.
Scores of people died in 2010 in a military crackdown on a Red Shirt rally in Bangkok, held to protest the earlier ousting of a Thaksin-linked government by a judicial coup.
Prayut is widely seen as having played a big role in that crackdown.
Thaksin’s opponents, who occupied parts of Bangkok for nearly seven months before last week’s coup, want to expunge the country of the influence of the billionaire tycoon-turned-politician, whom they accuse of corruption.
Prayut has imposed sweeping curbs on freedom of expression and political gatherings.
Senior Red Shirts were believed to remain in detention on Monday, while the leader of the anti-Thaksin protest movement was released on bail.
Despite the heavy-handed tactics and history of bloodshed, the Red Shirts said they would not be cowed by the military.
“We are not scared. We stopped being scared of the army a long time ago,” said Bird Pripana, Kwanchai’s son.
When US budget carrier Southwest Airlines last week announced a new partnership with China Airlines, Southwest’s social media were filled with comments from travelers excited by the new opportunity to visit China. Of course, China Airlines is not based in China, but in Taiwan, and the new partnership connects Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport with 30 cities across the US. At a time when China is increasing efforts on all fronts to falsely label Taiwan as “China” in all arenas, Taiwan does itself no favors by having its flagship carrier named China Airlines. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is eager to jump at
The muting of the line “I’m from Taiwan” (我台灣來欸), sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), during a performance at the closing ceremony of the World Masters Games in New Taipei City on May 31 has sparked a public outcry. The lyric from the well-known song All Eyes on Me (世界都看見) — originally written and performed by Taiwanese hip-hop group Nine One One (玖壹壹) — was muted twice, while the subtitles on the screen showed an alternate line, “we come here together” (阮作伙來欸), which was not sung. The song, performed at the ceremony by a cheerleading group, was the theme
Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised eyebrows recently when he declared the era of American unipolarity over. He described America’s unrivaled dominance of the international system as an anomaly that was created by the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. Now, he observed, the United States was returning to a more multipolar world where there are great powers in different parts of the planet. He pointed to China and Russia, as well as “rogue states like Iran and North Korea” as examples of countries the United States must contend with. This all begs the question:
In China, competition is fierce, and in many cases suppliers do not get paid on time. Rather than improving, the situation appears to be deteriorating. BYD Co, the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer by production volume, has gained notoriety for its harsh treatment of suppliers, raising concerns about the long-term sustainability. The case also highlights the decline of China’s business environment, and the growing risk of a cascading wave of corporate failures. BYD generally does not follow China’s Negotiable Instruments Law when settling payments with suppliers. Instead the company has created its own proprietary supply chain finance system called the “D-chain,” through which
RSS